


Thicker Than Water

by PenguinofProse



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Blake sibling angst, F/M, Family Dynamics, Found Family, Madi will show up eventually, Mostly Fluff, Some angst, The nightblood works, radio calls but different, so many radio calls, they spend a lot of time on the radio, yet another time jump AU but longer!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:20:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 62,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26516620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenguinofProse/pseuds/PenguinofProse
Summary: What does family mean when the world is ending? Clarke and Bellamy are trying to work that out. Diverges from canon part way through season 4 when the nightblood tests work. Angst, fluff, and eventual smut ahead.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 260
Kudos: 347





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to my next multi-chapter fic! I planned this out long before 7.13 happened but it's turned out to be a slightly ironic coincidence. I hope you're ready for ten chapters of Clarke and Bellamy remembering that they are each other's family!
> 
> (Sometimes, Penguin of Prose, irony can be funny. This is possibly not one of those times.)
> 
> Huge thanks to Stormkpr for betaing this and being the greatest supporter in the world. We're starting off in the middle of season 4, with Clarke at the lab and Bellamy in Arkadia. And Miller is in Arkadia rather than at the lab, because of Plot Reasons. I figure continuity errors are allowed now, based on what we've seen in the show, right?
> 
> Happy reading!

What does family mean when the world is ending?

Clarke doesn't know any more. Since the moment that dropship first landed, she's been noticing that life on Earth does funny things to relationships. It pushes people together quickly, intense bonds forged in the heat of the battle for survival. But it pulls people apart, too, in the most brutal of ways.

Right now, for instance, she's standing several yards away from her mum, watching a man burn in a radiation chamber and resisting the urge to weep like a child and beg for a hug. They are not mother and daughter, today. They are two women burdened with the weight of saving the human race.

Up on the balcony, Murphy and Emori watch, holding each other tight. That's one of those relationships hastened by the end of the world, Clarke thinks – they've only really known each other a couple of months.

Something about the way they stand together makes her miss Bellamy. That's silly. He wouldn't be holding her quite like that, if he were here. There's nothing romantic between them, and that's that. But he's her closest friend in the world these days, without a doubt. Funny, how they started out at opposite ends of society on the Ark, but now he's the person who knows her best, all in a few short months. Anyway, it's good that he's not here. He has his missing sister to worry about – his family. That's what's important to him, and Clarke can respect that.

But it doesn't mean she doesn't miss him.

She sighs, and forces her attention back to the task at hand – saving the human race. The test subject in the chamber is responding well. She's thinking of him as _the test subject_ because she can't quite bring herself to acknowledge that he's a human being. That way lies madness – she knows as much from past experience.

"Some burning and blistering, but that's to be expected." Jackson notes.

"We should stop here and see how he recovers." Clarke hears her mother recommend.

There are nods all round. This is the plan – to expose him to the radiation, then stand back and see whether he recovers as Luna did. And to keep him sedated the whole time, so that they can pretend he isn't a living, breathing person. Or at least, that's what Clarke's cynical side suggests.

She's not looking forward to playing the waiting game, now. The test subject – Bayliss – is no longer being exposed to the radiation, and it's simply a matter of monitoring his vital signs and seeing whether he recovers. Honestly, the worst part about that is that it's a one person job – given both Jackson and Abby are here, Clarke knows she will have nothing to do except worry for the next several hours, or even days.

She could try drawing, but it seems frivolous to draw when the world is ending. She could try getting a head start on figuring out the logistics of how they will distribute the nightblood if all goes to plan, but that sounds a lot like tempting fate, seeing as they don't yet know whether it has worked.

Clarke is startled to find her mother at her side, laying a gentle hand on her arm. Apparently they are allowed to be affectionate with each other again, now that their task is temporarily on hold.

"I'm going to radio Marcus." Abby says softly. "Jackson's got this and I need to get out of here for a minute. Do you want to come talk to Bellamy?"

"Bellamy?" She echoes foolishly. It's not that she doesn't know who he is, just that she doesn't understand the question.

"Yeah. Want to call him?"

She frowns. "I don't have anything to say to him."

Her mother smiles gently. "That's not what I asked."

Clarke thinks about that carefully. Radio calls back to Arkadia are for business, and for saving the world. Social radio calls exist only between lovers, she's pretty sure – her mum calls Kane all the time. But now she comes to think of it, she did call her mum occasionally before she got here. Perhaps a more general definition is needed – social radio calls are for family, for people you care about.

Well, then. In that case, she wants to call Bellamy.

"Thanks, Mum. That's a good idea. I'll come speak to Bellamy."

The world might be ending, but she has time to chat with the people she cares about.

…...

Bellamy is somewhere between confused and alarmed when Kane tells him Clarke is waiting for him on the radio.

Radios are for important news, he's pretty sure – often bad news. Or else they're for couples, and he and Clarke are not a couple, however badly he might wish it could be otherwise.

"She is? What's wrong?" He asks, urgent.

Kane smiles calmly. "Nothing's wrong, Bellamy. It sounds like she just wants a chat." He softens his voice a little further. "I know it's been difficult for them, doing these experiments. Abby said it reminded her of Mount Weather."

Bellamy nods, picking up easily on Kane's hint. Nothing's wrong on a world-ending disaster or life-ending injury kind of a level, but something is wrong. Clarke is upset, and pretending not to be, and wants someone to talk to. He can deal with that.

He can deal with that a hell of a lot better than he'd be able to deal with her genuinely just wanting a chat, he thinks. That would be frightening yet wonderful new territory, and he's not sure how he would cope with it. But sensitive and often subtle mutual support is what they've been doing for each other for months, since the night she first absolved him of his grief while he sat slumped against a tree.

His mission now clear in his mind, he heads for the radio.

"Clarke? It's me." He offers, less than helpfully, as he takes a seat.

"Bellamy. Hey."

There's a pause. He sucks in a breath.

"Kane said that the experiments have been tough on you guys." He tries to get the ball rolling.

"Mmm. Yeah, I guess so. They've been tougher on the test subject." She offers sadly.

"I'm sure. Was that what you wanted to talk about?" He asks, in that gentle tone he usually saves for stressful late nights in her office.

"What? Oh, no. No, I didn't really want to talk _about_ anything. I just thought – you know. We haven't spoken for a few days."

He's rather taken aback by that. This is actually a chat – the kind of pointless radio call couples might share to enjoy each other's company when kept apart by the business of saving their people. This is about nothing other than Clarke wanting to spend some time talking to him.

Huh. That changes things. Or at least, it would change things, were it not for the end of the world bearing down on them.

"Bellamy?" Clarke asks, a little tentative. It occurs to him that his stunned silence probably has her worried.

"Hey. Sorry, still here. You're right, it's been too long." He swallows down nerves. "Maybe we should try to keep in touch more often." He suggests, tone carefully casual.

"I'd like that. So – how have things been in Arkadia?"

He considers that for a moment. He's trying to learn how to have a cheerful chat with the best friend he has something of a crush on, so he ought to keep his answer light.

But the honest truth is that things in Arkadia have been awful.

He and Clarke have always been honest with each other, so he tells her something of the truth. "Not good. The black rain took eighteen lives but took even more out of morale."

"Yeah, I thought it would. I heard about Peter and about – about what you tried to do. I'm so sorry, Bellamy."

He stiffens, emotions still raw from that night. "Not your fault."

"That's not what I meant. I meant I'm sorry it happened. I'm sorry I wasn't there to go with you." Clarke persists, gentle yet determined, as is her way.

"Thanks." He mutters.

He hears her suck in a loud breath. "Kane told me about your sister, too. I can't imagine how you're feeling."

"Not great." He admits. So much for a cheerful chat – he's been no fun at all, here. She's never going to want to call him again at this rate.

"Just promise me you won't do anything stupid? Promise me you're not going to run after her?"

He swallows. "I can't. I've got no idea where she is." No, he can do better than that. He can be more honest than that, with Clarke. "And I guess even if I have thought about going after her, I'd wait till I know how things go with you in the lab. No point running after her if we're all dead anyway." He concludes sadly.

"I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to find a way to keep you safe. To keep everyone safe." When he hears the conviction in her voice, somehow he finds that he believes her, quite against his better judgement. Based on his past mistakes, he's not convinced his better judgement was ever that good anyway.

"Yeah. I have faith you'll figure something out." He tells her, hoping he sounds more encouraging than sad.

"We'll be OK."

He hesitates for a moment. He really would like this to become a happier conversation, more the kind of light banter he might expect to share with a woman he has a crush on. But he supposes that something about this is very typical of him and Clarke – bonding over grief and guilt, clinging to the most tenuous of bright spots.

He just wishes they could learn to do both.

With that in mind, he tries to move the conversation on.

"Thanks for calling, Clarke. It's good to hear your voice. And I've been wanting to tell you about Jasper's latest prank." It's a risk, given her recent conflict with Jasper, but it's the only lighthearted thing he can think of to say.

"Yeah?"

"He swapped out all the soap in the men's bathrooms for this really floral shampoo. We're all walking around smelling like roses or whatever."

She laughs softly. "I'm happy to hear he's still at work. It's good that he's starting to find a little bit of his old humour again, isn't it?"

Bellamy frowns. "I'm not sure about that. If he's doing better at all, it's not by much. But yeah. I guess it's better than nothing."

"And now you smell like roses?" She prompts.

"Yeah. Well, Japser said it was meant to be Jasmine. He spent ages on it, Clarke – he distilled all these scents himself and did some complicated chemistry and there we have it, Jasper Jordan's floral shampoo. He's getting women come up to him to say they've smelled it on their boyfriends or husbands and want to buy some."

"So was it a prank or a business opportunity?"

He laughs. "Maybe a bit of both."

"Well make sure he doesn't sell it all before I get home. I want to smell you."

There's a stunned pause. Bellamy isn't sure whether to laugh or tell her he's a teeny bit in love with her – or maybe both at once.

Then Clarke continues in a rush. "I mean, I want to smell the shampoo on you. Or on any guy. I just think it sounds funny."

"Yeah. Of course." He hopes he sounds smooth. He doesn't feel too smooth, just now. He's always been less smooth with Clarke than with literally any other woman on Earth – or even in space. It's a side effect of the way he feels about her, he supposes.

"I should probably go see if Jackson wants to take a break." Clarke mutters.

Damn it. He hopes he hasn't scared her off with all that shampoo nonsense. "Yeah. That's cool. I actually have a shift starting soon."

"OK. Great. Well I'll see you when I get back, I guess." No. No way. That is not how this ends.

"I was thinking I'd call you before that." He says lightly. "I've got nothing on tomorrow evening, if that's a good time?"

"Yeah. That works. We might have some news on whether the nightblood is a viable solution by then."

"Great. Speak to you then. Take care."

"You too. Stay safe."

Bellamy manages to resist the urge to actually punch the air in victory when he sets down the radio handset. He figures that would be a bit of a foolish overreaction to having a civil conversation with his closest friend. But he does allow himself a wide grin, because Clarke is doing OK, and she likes speaking to him, and if they're going to make a habit of this it at least gives him one small thing to look forward to amidst the unholy mess that is the end of the world.

Radio calls are not just for important news and couples, it turns out. They're also for him and Clarke.

…...

For the first time in as long as she can remember, Clarke is feeling genuinely optimistic. The early indications suggest that the nightblood treatment is working, and that Bayliss is recovering from his radiation exposure. Sure, his condition could still deteriorate. And even if he gets better, they then have to figure out arrangements for injecting the whole of the human race before the death wave hits.

But still, this is better news than she's received in quite some time.

Her mother and Jackson are already getting started on making the serum. They figure that it's worth doing that if there's even the slightest chance that their experiment will prove successful. That way, they have given themselves a head start – and if it doesn't work out, only a little time has been wasted.

Clarke offered to help them with that, of course. But she was kindly reminded that she only made it as far as being a medical apprentice. She'll be useful when the time comes to actually distribute the serum and inject everyone, but this is not her moment.

She therefore takes a notepad and a pencil and sets about planning how they will distribute the nightblood if all goes to plan. At least, that's what she tells herself she's doing – really she's sitting by the radio and waiting for Bellamy to call.

She really hopes he calls. He did say he would, and he keeps his promises. But talking on the radio is a rather new development in their friendship, and she's taking nothing for granted.

She's making a little progress with her plan. She supposes that the best idea would probably be for her mum and Jackson to stay here making more serum while she starts ferrying the first few doses back to the mainland and then distributing them. That's if Bayliss really does recover, of course – she has learnt the hard way that she mustn't get ahead of herself at times like this.

The radio crackles into life at last.

"This is Bellamy, calling from Arkadia. Is Clarke there?" He sounds slightly awkward, she thinks, and she can just picture the stiff frown on his face.

"I'm here."

"Clarke. Hey."

"How are you doing?" She asks, because that seems like an obvious way to start a conversation.

"Fine." He says. She hopes to figure out whether or not that's a lie over the course of this chat. "What about you?"

"Pretty good, actually. We might have some good news about the nightblood."

"Yeah?"

She hesitates, wonders how much to say. Obviously none of their progress is public knowledge yet, but this is Bellamy. She can trust him, she's certain of it.

"Yeah. There's no one listening in on your end, is there?"

"No." He sounds puzzled, she thinks.

"We're cautiously optimistic. The test subject's vital signs are improving quickly. My mum and Jackson are already working on more serum. That stays between us, though, OK?"

"Yeah, of course. Thanks for telling me." He says warmly.

"I wanted to share the good news with you." She tries to convince herself that's for logical reasons – like reassuring him that his faith was well-placed, or that his sister will be safe – but does not entirely succeed.

"You're making my good news look a little pathetic." He laughs.

"You have good news?"

"I'm trying to have good news. I had a good hunting trip with Miller this morning."

"That's great." She says, genuinely happy for him. She knows he's had a run of spectacularly bad luck, these last few days, and it's a relief to hear him sounding somewhat brighter.

"Hardly saving the world." He snorts.

"I disagree. I've been thinking, and if this nightblood solution does work out – which is a pretty big _if_ – but if it does work, we're going to need to take shelter while the death wave is burning. And we're going to need to eat during that time."

"You're already planning that far ahead?" He asks, somewhere between impressed and amused, she thinks.

"Yeah. I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, but we need to be ready."

"Let me know if there's anything I can do to help." He offers.

She thinks about it. She really wants to tell him that calling her on the radio is helping more than he knows, but she's not sure she's brave enough for that.

She settles for a compromise, in the end. "Just keep being you. I know I can always count on your support."

It's the honest truth, but it's only half of what she needs to pluck up the courage to say to him before the world burns.

…...

When the whole population of Arkadia is summoned to a meeting three days later, Bellamy is pretty certain he knows what's going on. He's expecting this to be an announcement about the nightblood. He's been in touch with Clarke a couple of times in recent days, and he knows that the nightblood solution is going ahead. More than that, Clarke has already planned how the serum is to be made and delivered in time.

There's just one flaw in her plan – it doesn't involve scouring the forest for one missing seventeen-year-old girl. So just as soon as Clarke gets back with the serum, Bellamy plans to head out in search of his sister. He's intending to leave after Clarke gets back for entirely sensible reasons – it's so he can get his nightblood shot and take one with him for Octavia.

It's totally not because he's desperate to hug Clarke one more time before the end of the world.

He plans to come back, anyway. He plans to bring Octavia home. But he has to concede that he'll feel better for having said goodbye to Clarke, just in case he doesn't make it back here.

Sure enough, it turns out that this meeting has been called to give an announcement about the nightblood. Kane explains that Clarke will be here in a few days with the first doses, while Abby and Jackson stay on the island to make enough for everyone. Meanwhile, everyone in Arkadia must help to fire-proof the buildings and prepare stores of food to last them through the initial death wave.

Bellamy more or less zones out. It's nothing Clarke hasn't already told him.

After the meeting, people stay to mill around for a few moments. Bellamy says hi to Harper and Monty, as he hasn't seen them much in recent days. He smirks at Bree, because it always does him good to have an admirer.

And then he finds himself approaching Jasper.

"Hey, Jasper. How are you doing?"

"Just great." Jasper says. That's presumably a lie or a joke – but not a very funny one.

"Have you got any more of that shampoo?" Bellamy asks, without allowing himself to analyse why he wants to know.

Jasper frowns. "Why the sudden interest?"

"Just... you know. Happy to see you're using your talents for something more useful than moonshine. I want to support your business."

Jasper snorts. "I've still got some, yeah."

"Great. Can I get one? What are you trading for it?"

Jasper's eyes light up with curiosity. "I'll give you it for free if you'll tell me who it's for." He offers. "Who's the lucky woman, huh?"

Bellamy frowns. "Really, I'd rather trade for it."

"Come on, don't be such a downer. Just tell me who it's for. Who's got you all domestic and buying shampoo, Bellamy?"

"I'll give you a shirt for it." Bellamy grinds out. "A good one, no holes."

Jasper looks stunned. "A whole shirt for a bottle of shampoo? And for protecting your secret? Intriguing."

"So is that a deal?"

Jasper reaches into his pack, hands over a small bottle filled with milky-coloured liquid. Bellamy can't quite believe he's doing this, but it seems that he is. He reaches out, takes the bottle with careful hands.

"Thanks. I'll bring the shirt to supper. Shake on it?"

A hearty handshake follows. Bellamy nods, slightly awkward, and turns to take his precious prize back to his room.

He's nearly out of earshot when Jasper calls after him.

"Hope Clarke enjoys her shampoo."

Damn it. He feels his shoulders tense up, realises too late that he has probably given the truth away through his reaction. He never has been smooth when it comes to Clarke.

Never mind. It doesn't matter – that's what he decides, as he walks back to his room. It doesn't matter whether he's subtle, or whether she feels the same way, or whether they ever get together.

What matters is that she's going to survive the end of the world – and with any luck, he's going to survive it with her.


	2. Chapter two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter! Huge thanks to everyone who commented on the last one - great to see people are looking forward to this story despite (or should that be because of??) everything that's gone wrong with the show. Thanks as ever to Stormkpr for betaing. Happy reading!

Bellamy wonders whether it would be acceptable to radio Clarke.

He hasn't heard from her since yesterday, and it's now well into the afternoon. And they did say they would try to talk more often, so he figures he's allowed to go call her.

The thing is, there's a difference between it being _allowed_ and it being truly _acceptable_. He's still trying to get his head around this new development in their friendship, and he doesn't want to pester her or make things awkward by calling her all the damn time.

Yes, he's aware that worrying about awkwardness when the world is ending is probably a case of confused priorities. But in his defence, the world will end either way. His relationship with Clarke feels a little more under his control – but not by very much.

He doesn't need to call her today. That's what he decides in the end. She's coming home soon and anyway, he called yesterday. She should be the next one to pick up the radio and initiate conversation, out of the two of them. This makes him feel like a nervous teenager trying to read the behaviour of one of the girls he went to school with, but he supposes it can't be helped. Clarke has always had a special talent for leaving him soundly bemused.

He sighs and stretches out over his bed. He's terrible at waiting for the death wave to come, hates the tension of sitting here with nothing to do. When Clarke's not around he's not entirely sure what to do with himself – sure, he's a guard, but he feels like he ought to be doing more. When she's here the pair of them find themselves in strategy meetings and make life-or-death lists. Without her, he feels like any other young man waving a gun around at random.

She always did make him feel like more than another janitor from factory station.

His frustration is mercifully interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Come in."

It's Miller, looking harassed. "Hunting trip. Can you come?"

Bellamy frowns. "I'm on night watch tonight. But yeah, sure." He's been bored out of his mind, today, if he's being honest.

Miller nods. "We'll be back in time. But Kane and Jaha have taken a division out on some errand to Polis and we need to keep the food coming in."

Bellamy understands Miller's point – they need to stockpile enough rations to last them through the death wave. He only wonders why Kane and Jaha have gone on an adventure.

"Do you know what they're doing?"

"No idea. Something secret. Come on, let's go."

Bellamy doesn't wait to be asked twice. He gets to his feet and the two of them set out down the hallway, catching up on trivial news as old friends do. Sometimes Bellamy cannot believe that they have only known each other since last year – it feels like Miller has been a brother to him all his life, in many ways. He supposes that trying to survive on Earth does funny things to relationships.

They have a good time, out hunting that afternoon. They catch a lot, and laugh a lot – probably more than Bellamy has laughed since his sister's disappearance and the black rain, except perhaps during his precious radio calls with Clarke. Miller's a great friend – supportive in an unobtrusive sort of a way, able to balance light humour with serious dedication to his duty.

But he's not Clarke.

And that's proof if any were needed, Bellamy thinks, that Clarke is not just his good friend. She's more than that – she understands him on a deeper level than anyone else he has ever met, seems to genuinely value him for his character rather than his capabilities.

He just wishes he could be sure he was more than a good friend to her, too.

…...

Clarke wonders whether it would be acceptable to radio Bellamy.

He called her the day before yesterday, and she figures she's probably OK to return the gesture soon. He did say he would be happy to speak to her more often, after all. They seem to have established that they are the kind of particularly close friends who are allowed to call each other for a chat – or perhaps even that they are more than friends, she allows herself to hope in the quiet moments between saving the human race.

There have been too many of those quiet moments, lately. She feels like she's been killing time here, fetching and carrying for her mother and Jackson, while everyone else gets on with her job. Kane and Jaha found a bunker in Polis yesterday to protect more people while the death wave burns, for example. All Clarke is doing is hanging around waiting for the moment when she can roll out her plan to administer the nightblood serum. Even giving herself the nightblood injection was a brief and rather anticlimactic distraction from the uselessness of standing around the lab and hoping for something to do.

She jumps to her feet the moment she hears her mother call her name.

"What can I do?" Clarke asks, already dashing to the other side of the lab.

"That's dose number two thousand. You can call Bellamy and ask him to pick you up – you and the first batch of serum."

Clarke sighs in relief. "We're ready to start distribution." She concludes.

Abby allows herself a small smile. "We will be by the time he gets here. Go on, tell Bellamy you need a lift. We should keep working."

Clarke runs to the radio. That's obviously because she's keen to get back to Arkadia and get to work on saving the human race, not because she's keen to speak to Bellamy. And in fact, now she comes to think of it, she doesn't see why it should be Bellamy who picks her up. There are half a dozen guards at Arkadia who are trained in driving the rover, not to mention most of the engineering team. But she's hardly going to complain – a ten hour journey in Bellamy's sole company sounds like her idea of heaven, right now.

She has very small dreams.

Maybe it will be different, one day. Maybe there will be peace and safety, and she will owe nothing more to her people, and she will be able to dream bigger.

Huh. Some chance of that happening. It was a naive idea when she discussed it with Lexa, and she knows she's no more likely to get some kind of fairy tale happy ending with Bellamy, either. Bad things happen to people she loves. Bad things happen to _everyone_ , in fact, in her experience.

She pushes that less-than-useful thought aside and picks up the radio. It's Kane who answers, so Clarke asks for Bellamy and then sits back in her chair to wait.

"Clarke? You still there?" His familiar voice pipes up, only a few moments later.

"Yeah. I'm here."

"Hey. It's good to hear from you."

"My mum sent me to ask you to come pick me up, along with the first batch of nightblood."

"Oh. Yeah, sure." She wonders if he sounds disappointed, or if that's only wishful thinking.

She tests her theory. "I was going to call you tonight anyway. I found this book about Roman history that made me think of you."

"You did?" Yes, he definitely sounds brighter now.

"Yeah. I'm not going to tell you all about it now though – I should save something for us to talk about on the drive home, right?"

He laughs. "We're going to spend a ten hour drive talking about Roman history?"

"Maybe not the whole thing." She concedes.

"Why are you so into Roman history all of a sudden anyway?" He asks, tone teasing.

"I've not had much to do. That's why I need you to get me out of here and drive me home to Arkadia."

"Yeah, sure. Let me just -"

"I don't mean I want you to leave _now_." She reprimands him sharply. "It's a long way. You should get some rest."

He disagrees with her, of course. Sometimes she thinks that's what he does best. "I'll set off now – or as soon as we're done talking. I can take a break when it's dark so the battery doesn't run out on me."

She considers that for a moment. It's not a plan she really likes, if she's being honest. That's a lot of driving, and not enough sleep, and she doesn't want him to have an accident. But the fate of the human race is at stake, because the nightblood needs distributing, and she knows that she must put that above a little concern that Bellamy might get tired.

It's not so easy to do that, though.

He'll be OK. He's faced tougher challenges than a day of driving before now. And when this is over, with any luck, they'll both get the chance to catch up on some rest.

"OK. If you're sure. I guess I'll see you some time tomorrow morning?"

"Yeah."

"Let me know how you're getting on with the drive." She says, tone carefully light. "You know, check in sometimes."

"I'll be fine." She can practically hear him rolling his eyes. "I'll take care."

"Bellamy -"

"I'll take care, and I'll check in every couple of hours." He concludes in a quelling tone.

He'd better do. She doesn't like it when he's late checking in. She didn't like it when he was in Mount Weather, and she certainly doesn't like the idea now.

…...

Bellamy starts driving more or less right away, pausing only long enough to ask Raven to check that the rover is good to go. He has to start driving right away, because he needs to ferry that nightblood serum back here to save the human race. His urgency isn't entirely founded on his excitement at the thought of seeing Clarke again. Honestly, it isn't.

Occasionally he allows himself to wish that his life didn't just revolve around running after his womenfolk. His chief duty in life was protecting his sister, and by implication his mother, from the earliest years of his childhood. And recently, of course, his devotion to Clarke's safety has become his focus. At least that's a little better than giving up everything for his responsibility to Octavia, he likes to think. At least with Clarke he has something of a role and an identity, actually makes a positive impact on the lives of his people. At least today, going to pick up this woman he considers family constitutes saving the human race.

But yeah, sometimes he allows himself to dream of a different future. A future where his family cares about him half as much as he cares about them. Where he doesn't feel like he's bound by his duty to them, grovelling for the scraps of their affection, but instead they put him first as he does for them. It's not that he wants Clarke to walk across a battlefield for him or Octavia to stow away on a dropship for him, as such. He just thinks it would be comforting to know that they'd care enough to do that for him, if ever the need arose.

It's probably a silly dream. And the world is ending, anyway.

It's about time he made his first call to check in with Clarke. He knows she worries about him more than she likes to let on – in fact, she worries about everyone and everything more than she likes to let on.

"Clarke? Are you there?" He feels less stiff and awkward about starting a radio conversation, now, than he did only days ago.

"I'm here. How's the drive?"

His first instinct is to tell her that the drive is _fine_. But a one-word answer is not great conversation material, he thinks. To be honest, he suspects that if he goes with _fine_ Clarke will hang up soon after and he'll be left to drive in lonely silence for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

"No trouble so far. And it's good to see the first signs of spring." He wonders if that sounds sappy and like a mangled poetry quote. He's still working on this whole _cheerful chat with Clarke_ concept.

"Yeah? I don't remember noticing that on the drive down here. You'll have to show me on the drive home."

He makes an agreeing kind of noise.

"How's everyone back in Arkadia?" She asks. He thinks that's an interesting question, simply for the fact it doesn't need asking. She could ask him in person when he arrives tomorrow morning, or she could not ask it at all and see for herself when they get home.

It's a question, therefore, that she can only be asking to make conversation.

"Jasper's doing well. His shampoo business is going strong. Monty and Harper are looking forward to seeing you."

"That's good."

There's a pause. Bellamy knows the conversation is over, but he doesn't want it to be over. He might not get many more conversations with Clarke if his self-appointed mission to find his sister doesn't go to plan.

"I'll see you tomorrow. Check in when you stop driving for the night?" Clarke says.

"Will do."

The radio lapses into silence.

Bellamy has a slightly different outlook as he drives, now. He finds himself looking intently at the forest and scenery around him, memorising any feature of interest he sees as fuel for future conversations with Clarke. Part of him is also drinking it in because Earth is beautiful, in a way that still surprises and overwhelms him since he landed here so recently. He's sad it's going to burn soon – it's as simple as that.

He quite likes driving. Maybe that's a silly thought, but it's the truth. Just for a while he gets to live a straightforward life that revolves around navigating the rover safely through the trees. In moments like this he does not have to worry about letting down his mother or losing his sister or loving Clarke more than she loves him. There's only the road ahead and the worn steering wheel beneath his hands.

And then, once more, there's Clarke's voice over the radio.

"Why haven't you checked in? Have you stopped yet?" She asks.

"No." He says mildly. He's long since learnt that she has a habit of asking slightly aggressive questions like that when she's stressed, but it will always pass when she gets it out of her system.

"It's getting dark."

"It is." He has to acknowledge that she's right. The time seems to have flown by, these last couple of hours, while he's been driving and trying not to think too hard.

"Bellamy -"

"I'll pull over when I find a good spot." He reassures her. He allows himself, just for a moment, to feel almost comforted that she worries about him so much. He doesn't like to think of her anxious, of course, but it's kind of touching that it's him she's anxious about.

"Great."

Another one of those pauses. They can talk for hours on end when there's a crisis to solve or a scheme to plan. But they've not had enough practice at chatting peacefully, Bellamy thinks. Maybe that's something they might resolve if they manage to spend that month or so safely in a bunker while they death wave burns.

For now, though, he guesses he ought to say goodbye.

Only then Clarke takes him by surprise.

"Let me tell you about my book." She says, almost _urgently_ , somehow.

That's a request he's not going to turn down. Between the way he feels about Roman history and the way he feels about Clarke, he cannot imagine a better suggestion, actually.

"Sure. What exactly was it about?"

"Roman emperors. You know, like Augustus." Yes. He does know _like Augustus_ , as it happens. But he decides it's more sweet than funny that Clarke is trying to step out of her comfort zone to make conversation with him, so he lets her have it.

"Yeah?" He prompts, hoping to keep her talking.

She does keep talking. She keeps talking for a surprisingly long time, actually – laughing at some of the eccentricities of various emperors, then pulling herself up short when she recalls that history is real, and real people had to suffer for it. Narrating great swathes of history he already knows, then losing confidence and asking him to take over. He bails her out each and every time, but then pushes the conversation back over to her. He likes listening to her talk while he drives – it's like listening to Jasper's music player, only a thousand times better.

She's still talking when he finds a place to pull over, as the sky grows truly dark. But he doesn't mention that, because if he tells her he's stopped and points out that night has fallen, presumably she'll go away. So when the conversation starts to flag, he prompts her once more, and sits back in his chair.

She's still talking when his eyes are starting to drift shut and he really ought to be sleeping. But he tries to stay awake, and finds himself reflecting that this has long been something of a fantasy of his – not a sexual fantasy, obviously, but a fantasy all the same. He's dreamed of the day that Clarke would spend hours just chatting with him about his interests. He wonders if maybe, tomorrow, they might have a go at discussing her life beyond leadership, too.

In the end, it's Clarke who notices the time. Of course it is.

"I should stop boring you and let you get to sleep." She says, sounding suddenly nervous.

"I'm not bored. I really enjoyed that." He rushes to assure her, then wonders if maybe that sounded a little too _keen_. "I mean – it's good to just chat with you. Without the world ending."

She laughs a sad and slightly desperate laugh. "Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow."

"You too." She has no idea how much, he thinks. Maybe one of these days he'll find the words and courage and time to tell her.

"Great. Well, go to sleep, I guess."

He snorts. For a whole hour or so there, she managed to switch off her tendency to give instructions and think she's supposed to be leading the world. But it seems that their leisure time together is over, and she's in business mode once more.

"Will do, Clarke. You should get some rest too."

"I will. Sleep well."

That ought to be a ridiculous instruction, he thinks. He's grabbing a nap in a chilly rover in the middle of a forest on the road to nowhere in particular. He brought a scratchy blanket and he can use his pack as a pillow, but that's hardly a recipe for a comfortable night.

And yet, he knows with some instinct that he cannot quite explain that he will sleep well, tonight. He's going to have a good day tomorrow – or at least as good as days get, when the world is ending.

...

The first thing Clarke does on arriving at the shore is hug Bellamy.

Unloading the boat can wait, she figures. Or Murphy and Emori can get started on it, or choose not to, as they prefer. But hugging Bellamy cannot wait, because when they were last standing on this beach together they weren't sure they were going to get to hug again. Sure, she told him they'd meet again, but she's always had a habit of pasting on a firm face and pushing her worries to one side.

This is a good hug – possibly their best yet, she thinks. Bellamy's arms are even firmer than she remembers and he smells better than ever, somehow, despite his night on the road. She wonders if it's that shampoo.

But the best thing of all? She could swear she just felt his lips ghost over the sensitive skin of her neck.

She wishes this was it. She wishes this was the happy ending – that now they could maybe sit down and have that drink and she could do some sketching. But she knows they're only just getting started. The nightblood serum needs distributing, and she needs to talk to the grounders about accepting artificial nightblood, when some of them firmly believe it undermines their religion.

She'd rather just stand here and hug Bellamy for the next week or so. Maybe ten days, even. But the world will have gone up in flames by then.

She forces herself to pull away. Immediately the world feels more dangerous, more cold. Sometimes she could swear his hugs are a kind of magic – they're comforting like nothing else she has ever known.

"Did you miss me?" She asks, trying for a teasing tone. Trying to pretend that she's asking to have fun, not because she desperately wants the answer to be yes.

"Yes." He swallows. "It's good to see you. Come on, let's get going."

That's the story of their relationship, isn't it? A hurried sentence about how much they care about each other, if they're lucky. And then it's fast overtaken by _we need to move_.

The two of them don't talk much as they load the rover – largely because Murphy appears determined to carry the conversation single-handed. He's been strangely outgoing, these last few days, Clarke thinks. Maybe his optimism that they might all survive this has him thinking it's time to forge a few more friendships. Maybe without the pressures of survival, Murphy could be a more likeable man.

She wonders if Bellamy is finding it strange, too. At one point Murphy offers to help him carry a large crate, and Bellamy looks up to meet Clarke's eyes with a sort of secretive smirk. She likes that. She likes the idea that they share secretive smirks, when the moment is right.

Clarke still doesn't know Emori well, despite spending the last few days living alongside her. She keeps to herself, and that's something Clarke can understand, having learnt a basic thing or two about her life story.

Before long the rover is loaded, and it's time to go their separate ways. Murphy says a strangely hearty goodbye, Emori waves once, and then they sail off back to the island.

"Tell me I'm not the only one who found that strange." Bellamy mutters, as he starts up the rover.

"You mean with Murphy?"

"Yeah."

"You're not the only one who found that strange. He's been... I don't know, trying harder?"

Bellamy looks thoughtful. "I know he saved your life in the City of Light, but I'm still not sure I trust him."

Clarke only hums in response to that. She's got very little idea whether she trusts John Murphy or not. Earth does funny things to interpersonal relationships, remember? She supposes she would trust him if it came down to it, as she would trust almost anyone in a moment of desperation. She just hopes she can avoid desperate moments for the foreseeable future and never have to find out.

She shakes her head. She doesn't plan on spending this whole journey talking about any of their friends or acquaintances. She plans to spend it talking about _them_.

"Tell me more about Octavia's namesake." She invites him, trying for an encouraging smile. He's supposed to have his eyes fixed on the road, of course, so it shouldn't matter whether she smiles. But he seems determined to look at her more often than she thinks he really ought.

He shakes his head. "Not happening. We talked about history all of last night. It's your turn. What embarrassing interests did you have as a kid?" He asks her, tone teasing, but eyes serious.

"I liked to draw." She offers, because that feels like a safe answer.

"I know that already. Try again." He orders, slanting her a look that is somewhere between affectionate and exasperated.

She thinks about it carefully. There is an obvious answer that springs to mind, but it's not a _comfortable_ answer. It's not an interest many young woman have, in her experience, or at least not one they are expected to have. And it's an interest she shared with some people she loved and lost, so that makes it a difficult subject.

She steels her courage. This is Bellamy – she's pretty sure she can tell him anything, at this point. She trusts him. And hasn't she been thinking, lately, that she'd like them to grow closer when it comes to personal matters rather than only discussing politics and logistics?

"You have to promise not to laugh." She warns him.

"I promise."

She sucks in a long breath. "I used to love watching soccer with my parents and the Jahas. I swear I've watched every FA cup final at least four times over."

He doesn't laugh. On the contrary, he looks rather closer to crying.

"Thanks for telling me that, Clarke." He says softly.

She thinks that's an odd thing to say. It implies that he feels gratitude, or something, when all she did was share a silly and slightly upsetting insight into her childhood. She mutters a stiff _you're welcome_ under her breath, and wonders what to say next.

Bellamy picks up the slack.

"I'm sorry about Wells." He murmurs.

She looks up, sharp.

He continues. "I wish I'd known him better. I can see now that he was a good guy, and I'm sorry I didn't realise that sooner."

She nods, heavy and sort of resentful. This was supposed to be a light chat, and it seems to have gone awry. But now they've started down this conversational path, she finds that there's something she wants to get off her chest. Something she's never been able to say to anyone, until now.

"I'm almost more upset about Thelonius." She mutters, eyes fixed on the road. "I really miss Wells, of course I do. But – he's dead. That's final, and there's closure. And sure, the circumstances were horrible, but he died as a good guy and that's that. But Thelonius – he was family to me, too. He's there in all my childhood memories, like an uncle or even another parent. And I don't even recognise him any more. Earth has changed him more than it's changed anyone else." She concludes, tearful.

She isn't surprised to find that Bellamy has reached out to lay a fleeting hand on her arm. That's a thing they seem to do, since that awful night with the list. His hand is gone again almost as soon as she's registered it, as he has to drive the rover. But the warmth lingers.

Maybe it's that warmth that gives her the courage to address the situation more directly.

"I'm sorry." She says, trying for a brisk tone. "I don't want this to be a sad day. I was actually really looking forward to having some time to just hang out with you."

"I think that's life, down here. There are always going to be sad moments even on the good days."

That's a dispiriting and upsettingly accurate outlook, she decides. And it's not exactly the cheerful affirmation of their friendship she was hoping for, from that conversational gambit.

She brightens considerably when it turns out that Bellamy wasn't done talking.

"There are more good moments when you're around." He tells her, smiling softly. "Come on, tell me more about your soccer obsession. I've got a ten hour drive ahead of me, I could use the entertainment."

"I can drive for a bit." She volunteers quickly. She more or less knows how to drive, and she doesn't want him to think she expects him to act as her personal chauffeur.

He shoots her a quelling look. Apparently he's driving, and that's that.

"And it wasn't an _obsession_." She mumbles, somewhat defensive – but she thinks defensive more because he doesn't want her to split the driving, than because of the soccer. He's an infuriatingly stubborn man, she decides.

He laughs a bit, shoots her another look. He really ought to watch the road more carefully.

"Sure it wasn't, Clarke. Now are you going to tell me who won the cup final in 2037 or am I going to have to live in ignorance forever?"

There's something very playful in his tone, and she likes it. She never thought the week before Praimfaya would be the week they'd learn to be playful with each other, but she decides easily and resolutely that it's better than never learning it at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you didn't already get this vibe, I plan on sticking around even though the show is over! Here's a chapter of angst and fluff!
> 
> Huge thanks to everyone who has left comments on this fic so far and thanks to Stormkpr for betaing as always. Happy reading!

Bellamy has spent hours, now, trying to plan his goodbye note to Clarke. In fact really he supposes he's been thinking about this for days, ever since he realised he would have to leave to look for his sister if the nightblood solution worked.

He's still no closer to picking up the pen.

How do you say goodbye to the woman who means the world to you, when the Earth is about to go up in flames? He's pretty sure she knows she means the world to him, but even so, they've never actually acknowledged it. So he's not sure whether to say anything about love or family or even _caring_. And all of this would be hard enough in person, but as it is, he cannot risk saying goodbye to her in person. He knows she'd try to talk him out of it, and that would be beyond painful for them both. So it is that he's trying to write a note that isn't completely inadequate.

He needs to just do it. He has to leave soon.

He procrastinates with other tasks. He fills his pack with a canteen of water and a change of clothes, but nothing else. He cannot take rations from Arkadia, because the residents will need all the food they can get. He's already had his nightblood shot, and he'll steal one for his sister along the way. He's learnt a thing or two from Miller, these last few months.

Finally, there is nothing else to do. He sits at the small desk in his room, looks at the blank sheet of paper before him. He's set the little bottle of Jasper's shampoo next to it, a reminder not to leave it behind when he goes to put Clarke's note by her door.

Like he needs a reminder. He's pretty sure he wouldn't forget to give Clarke the only gift he will ever be able to offer her.

He picks up the pen. He needs to – time is short. He spins it in his hand for a few seconds, considering, hesitating. _Thanks for your support_ , maybe? No, too formal. _Thanks for the radio calls_? No, there's more to their relationship than that.

 _I love you_?

Hell no. He's not brave enough for that, nor desperate enough, nor confident enough.

 _May we meet again_.

It's not much, but the sentiment is right, he thinks. He'll be back – at least he hopes and prays he will. And Clarke is the person he'll be thinking of every second he struggles to make it home in time.

He hefts his pack over his shoulder, glances down to make sure his bootlaces are tied tightly. He mustn't go walking out into the apocalypse with loose laces. He may be woefully underprepared in almost every other way imaginable, but that is one thing he intends to get right. He picks up the shampoo and the note, and heads out the door and down the corridor to leave them outside Clarke's room.

The hallways are very quiet, this time of night. That's why he's leaving now. He just needs to make it to Clarke's and then to the nightblood serum storage room without being caught, then slip out through Raven's gate. He hasn't asked anyone to turn the power off, didn't want to risk sharing his plan with anyone. But the gap in the fence there is pretty large these days, and he thinks that a determined rebel could slip through without getting hurt.

He hopes. He'll be no use to his sister if he electrocutes himself and gets caught screaming.

All is quiet in Clarke's section of hallway. That's a good sign. He walks right up to her door, staring at it hard. It's so tempting, now he's here, to knock and see if she's still up. He so desperately wants to share just one last hug with her, in case he doesn't make it home to her before the world burns.

No. He mustn't. Just put down the shampoo and run, Bellamy.

He sets the shampoo and the note on the floor, backs away slowly. This is it – his last chance to say goodbye to her in person. His last chance to hold her in his arms and tell her how much she means to him.

He mustn't do it.

He turns on his heel and strides back down the corridor.

…...

Clarke can't sleep.

It's stupid, because she _needs_ to sleep. She's tired, and tomorrow she has a whole day scheduled of driving round Trikru territory offering nightblood serum. And the day after that, Azgeda, which will hardly be a barrel of laughs. She'll be lucky if she manages to survive distributing the nightblood there, she thinks wryly.

It's well past midnight when she hears the footsteps in the corridor. Someone is trying to tread quietly, but she can just about pick them out all the same. And then the footsteps pause, right outside her door, for the longest time.

She sucks in a breath. Is this some assassin, come to finish her off? She lies perfectly still in bed, tries to think her way out of this. The windows on the Ark don't open, and are difficult to smash, so that's no good escape route.

It's when the footsteps start striding away again that it all makes sense. Her nighttime visitor is being less cautious, now that he is walking off. And she'd recognise that footfall anywhere – that's Bellamy, moving quickly, determinedly, and she can just imagine the unhappy frown he's wearing to match his stride.

He's leaving. That must be it. That's the only explanation she can think of – he's off out of here to look for his sister.

She doesn't know whether she's more hurt or upset or scared. But she can figure that out later. Right now, she leaps out of bed, dashes to the door, practically tears it open.

"Bellamy." She gives a low call, a sort of throaty midnight whisper that carries down the corridor.

He freezes, almost at the corner that would have taken him out of sight. She sighs in relief – she got here just in time, for once.

"Bellamy." She repeats. "Come talk to me for a minute." She hopes it doesn't sound like she's begging. Probably it does, though.

He turns, slowly, eyes averted. His jaw is clenched and, sure enough, he's wearing one hell of a frown. While he starts walking back towards her, she bends to pick up something she can see on the floor just outside her threshold. It's a bottle. A tiny bottle, filled with milky white liquid. And with it, a note – just four words.

 _May we meet again_.

Yes. He was leaving – that's certain.

He's about two yards away from her, now, but he doesn't come any closer. He looks sad and apprehensive and a thousand other things she doesn't want for him.

"Come in." She invites him. "I promise I won't hold you up much. Just – let's talk, _please_."

"You're not angry with me? You're not going to try and stop me?" He sounds almost disappointed, she thinks, which is really quite weird.

"I'm not angry that you think you have to go. I'd try to stop you but I know there's no point – you're set on going, and we'd just upset each other." She mutters, eyes fixed on the floor, wondering if she's given too much away. "I'm only angry that you left a _note_ rather than saying goodbye in person. Didn't you trust me to try to see it your way and help you out?"

His jaw isn't clenched any more. It's hanging slightly open, and he looks stunned. "You'd do that for me?"

 _I'd do anything for you_ , she thinks. She's pretty sure that's the truth – sometimes she even finds herself musing that she'd probably sacrifice most of the human race to save him, if ever that horrible choice presented itself.

"I knew you would go." She says, instead of anything more dangerous. "I should be angry with you for lying about it, the other day when I asked."

"But instead you're just hurt." He concludes sadly.

She nods. He stands, hands on hips, frown on face.

And then he breaks, taking two big steps forward, engulfing her in a hug.

"I'm sorry, Clarke. I never meant to hurt you. I just – she's my _sister_." He mutters, even as she squeezes him tight.

"I know. Now come in and let's make a plan."

He does come in. He walks right into her room, as if he wasn't desperately avoiding that only a few seconds ago. He sits himself down on the edge of the bed, swings his pack off his shoulders and sets it down at his feet.

Clarke takes a seat by his side, allows her thigh to press right up against his. She's going to miss these moments of fleeting physical comfort while he's away, so she figures she ought to make the most of them now.

"Whatever you can fit in one small pack isn't going to last you very long while you're gone." She says mildly.

"I know. But I didn't want to take rations other people would need."

She snorts. "You're taking rations. You want to leave without me fighting you on it, you're going to do it properly." She supposes that's half way to emotional blackmail, but in this moment, she doesn't much care. All she wants is for Bellamy to be safe on his travels – or as safe as anyone can be in a nuclear apocalypse, at least.

"Clarke -"

"You're taking a month's worth of rations. For two people. You can hunt while you're looking for your sister, sure. But if you get stranded out there when the death wave comes I want you to have at least some hope of finding shelter and sitting it out."

"I'll never carry all that." He points out, in the tone of someone who thinks he has won an argument.

"That's why you're taking a rover." She concludes neatly.

He starts protesting immediately. "I can't, Clarke. A _rover_? That's insane."

"It makes perfect sense. We don't need all of them, not really. And you're essential personnel. You need to be safe." He's as essential to the camp as a whole as he is to her, and that's a point she's willing to argue to the bitter end if that's what it takes.

"You're not the Chancellor. I know you've been standing in for Kane a lot but you can't just hand out _rovers_ like it's nothing."

"I can. And I am. I'll argue with him about it once you're gone. But you know he'll accept it – he cares about you, too." That's an implicit confession she didn't mean to make, but she supposes it can't be news to Bellamy at this point that she's top of the list of people who care about him.

"You're really sure about this? I can see that it would be safer but it's a big deal, Clarke."

"I'm sure. And you're taking a radio, too. We should keep in touch while you're gone." She trails off quietly, eyes fixed on her lap.

She feels Bellamy's warm arm reach around her shoulders. "Of course we should. If you think we can spare a radio, I'd definitely want to take one."

She nods. They sit there for a moment, close together, his arm still around her. But in the silence all sorts of unhelpful thoughts start creeping up on her – the realisation that this is really happening, that Bellamy is leaving her, that she might not see him again.

She stands up abruptly.

"I'll get the nightblood serum for your sister and some rations for you. Meet you in the hangar bay?" She offers briskly.

"Yeah. Yeah, sure."

With that, they go their separate ways.

It doesn't take long for Clarke to get the serum, because she's actually allowed in all the medical storerooms and knows the codes. She wonders how Bellamy was planning to deal with that obstacle, and asks herself for the hundredth time within ten minutes why he wouldn't just let her in on his plan. Similarly, she opens the food store up and takes what she calculates is just enough to keep one well-built guy and one slight but strong girl alive for a month – tanks of water as well as packs of food. That's a lot of rations, of course, so she loads them all on a trolley and starts wheeling them towards the rover.

"This is crazy."

That's how Bellamy chooses to greet her when she arrives. She doesn't really bother acknowledging it – she thinks the crazy thing here is not the number of supplies, but him feeling so duty-bound to a sister who hates him, hit him, and left him, that he's about to drive out into the end of the world to look for her. But she knows that wouldn't be a helpful contribution, knows how conflicted Bellamy feels, so she simply makes a start on loading the rover with his rations.

"I can do that." He volunteers at once.

She ignores him again. Loading the rover keeps her at least somewhat distracted, stops her from focusing on her fears for his safety.

They work together to pack the rover, in the end. Bellamy mostly handles the heavy tanks of water, while Clarke loads the food. She throws a couple of soft blankets in there, too. Maybe that's silly, but she likes to think of him having something nice to keep him warm and comfortable at night.

Then it's time for radios. Clarke hands a small portable radio set to Bellamy, then takes a radio for herself, hugs it close to her chest.

"Why are you taking that?" He asks her, apparently puzzled.

"So I can always pick up right away." She explains. "If I have this on me and you have that on you, we should be able to talk whenever we want. Let's pick a channel. No one uses eight." She suggests easily.

He gapes at her. "You're not just stealing _me_ a rover and a radio? You're stealing yourself a radio so we can talk more easily?"

"It makes perfect sense." She tells him robustly. She's not sure who she's trying to convince – himself or her. "I won't just use it to talk to you. While I'm out distributing the nightblood I'll need to check in with my mum and Kane."

"But you're going to leave it on channel eight." He concludes, reading her so easily as he always does.

"Yes." She acknowledges. "You might need me urgently." She knows she's definitely going to need him urgently, from time to time, and _he won't be here._

No. She mustn't allow herself to dwell on that.

At last, there are no more errands to manage. Bellamy has transport and food and communication. Clarke has a heavy heart, but she knows she's done all she can. This is why getting attached to people is dangerous, she supposes – she's stolen a great deal of essential supplies tonight and doesn't even feel bad about it.

It makes sense, she tries to tell herself. He's Bellamy. He's essential. And everything he's taken can be replaced, or they can just cope without. He, on the other hand, is irreplaceable, and it's only sensible to do everything she can to try to keep him alive.

Above all, he is not something she can _just cope without_.

He realises it's time to leave. She can see it in his body language, the lingering looks at her, the furtive looks at the open hangar bay door.

"I should get as far as I can on this battery before the morning."

"Yeah. I'll go tell the night watch you've got permission to be out." Another lie, another rule broken for this man. She wonders if she ought to be keeping count.

There's a pause. And then there's a hug, urgent and firm.

Clarke stays snuggled against Bellamy's chest for a long time. She doesn't want to let go, doesn't want him to leave. But she's also trying to find the words to make one crucial point.

She gathers her courage and whispers against his neck. "I'm only going to say this once, but please just let me say it. You don't have to go. You don't have to do this."

"I do." He insists, firm.

"No, you don't. I understand why you think you do, and I respect that, and that's why I'm here helping you steal a rover. But I just wanted to say that – that you are more than your sister's keeper." She concludes, proud of herself for getting the words out.

He squeezes her tight, one last time. "And you're more than the leader of your people. Now it's time for me to go."

With that, he pulls away. He hops into the driver's seat of the rover, starts up the engine.

Clarke jogs towards the gates to tell them to let him pass. She notices as she does so that she's still wearing pyjamas. Huh. Of course she is – she didn't stop to change when Bellamy tried to flee from her door. But all the same, it's only just now sinking in that she's woefully underprepared for this moment in more ways than one.

She simply isn't ready to say goodbye to him, tonight.

…...

Bellamy has a lot to think about as he drives – too much to think about, in fact. There is no hope tonight of enjoying the simplicity of focusing on the road ahead.

Apart from anything else, he doesn't even know where the road ahead will take him. It's only now he's left Arkadia that he's realising just how little he has planned this. He's got as far as deciding he'll ask around a few of the trading posts and larger villages, see if anyone has heard rumours of Skairipa on the move.

He wonders how it is that both Octavia and Clarke have acquired these horrible, violent epithets – Skairipa and Wanheda. He even considers for a moment that the possibility that he is cursed, somehow. Is he condemning every woman he loves to an horrific fate?

No. That makes no sense. That's just a case of waking night-terrors, and he ought to push it aside.

So that's it. That's a plan, of sorts – drive around, hunt a bit, ask some questions. Great. It's not the worst plan he's ever come up with – it doesn't involve a welding torch and a fiery explosion, for starters.

Plan formed, he finds his thoughts drifting to Clarke. He should have known she would want to help him, he curses. He can't imagine how much he hurt her by lying to her and trying to conceal his escape. He should have realised she would put his mission above her feelings and support him – isn't that what she always does, putting other people first?

It makes him feel like a monster.

He tries not to dwell on that. He tries to focus on the road, aims for that chilled-out state he so often enjoys while driving. He's going to head to Niylah's trading post first. That seems like as good a starting point as any.

No. His mind drifts back to Clarke. To the way she hugged him so tight, told him he was more than his sister's keeper.

No one's ever told him that before.

It made him want to kiss her. He remembers that, a fleeting moment where he was genuinely on the point of pressing his lips to her cheek or even her mouth. But then he thought better of it, decided it wasn't the moment. Apart from anything else, it would have reminded him too much of her leaving him after Mount Weather. He remembers how lost and lonely he felt without her, but hurt and angry too. He wonders if she's feeling like that, now.

Oh God. Of course she must be. What has he done?

It hits him in a cold flood of horror. He's done to her exactly what he so resented her doing to him. He's left her in a difficult situation, left her to cope alone with something they were going to tackle together. He's run off because of his own tangled emotions, rather than sticking around to do right by his partner and his people.

He supposes she'll handle it better than he did. She's _Clarke_. She won't shoot down three hundred grounders, or support a destructive regime. But he hates to think how she might react instead – turning inwards, as she always does with trauma, trying to cope with everything alone.

That's what makes him pick up the radio. He's done it, now. He's driven through the gates, and there's no turning back. He wouldn't turn back, anyway – he genuinely does feel a strong need to find his sister. But he hopes that if he talks this over with Clarke on the radio, now, he might at least be able to show her he's still with her in spirit.

He's barely been gone a couple of hours. Knowing Clarke, she's still not asleep. He presses the call button, even as he keeps driving into the darkness.

"Clarke?"

She picks up right away. "Bellamy, hey. You OK?" She sounds worried.

"I'm fine. Making good progress. I just – I wanted to talk to you. Everything happened so quickly when I was leaving, there were some things I should have said but didn't."

"OK." She says – less than helpfully, he thinks.

"I'm sorry." He mutters, finding that his throat feels thick with oncoming tears. "I'm so sorry for leaving. I know I'm doing the right thing for me, but I feel like I'm leaving you just like you left me after Mount Weather."

"It's different." She informs him without hesitation. "I was running away, then. But you're not running away. You're running _towards_ something. Towards someone you care about."

"I'm running away from someone I care about, too." He points out sadly.

There's more warmth in her voice as she continues. "Yeah. But – I get it, Bellamy. Your difficult relationship with your sister is not something we're going to be able to fix at a time like this. Find her, stay safe, and then we'll have the rest of our lives to figure it out."

We? _We'll_ have the rest of our lives to figure it out? Does she think that helping him heal his relationship with his sister is her business now, too? Does she think that they are the kind of particularly close friends who support each other through things like that?

It seems like she must do. That's what has him smiling slightly as he continues to speak.

"Thanks, Clarke. And I wanted to say that I'm still here for you. I know I can't help with the practical stuff while I'm gone, but we're still in this together, OK? You'd better call if you need to talk anything over or want a pathetic joke at the end of the day."

"I will. I'll be pestering you all the damn time."

He laughs. That's not something he could have imagined doing, three minutes ago, but Clarke always lifts his mood. "Good. I'm going to miss you."

"I already miss you." She says easily. "Take care. Eyes on the road. I'm going to try to get some sleep now I know you're doing OK."

He learns something, that night. No, it's definitely early morning by now. Either way, he learns something important. It turns out that personal radio calls with Clarke don't feel awkward at all, now. It's as if, amidst all the emotion of his frantic midnight departure, those barriers have broken down and they've allowed themselves to become rather more open about caring for each other.

There are a lot of clouds around, right now. Black rain clouds, probably. But as he thinks back over a comfortable and companionable and downright _loving_ conversation with Clarke, he knows that there is always a silver lining to be found.

…...

Clarke hasn't had much sleep, but she's had some. That's basically the best she could hope for, right now, she thinks.

So it is that, when dawn comes, she rolls out of bed. She knows she needs to get to Kane before word of Bellamy's mysterious midnight errand spreads. She dresses quickly, deciding that she would like to look and feel better prepared for this than she did for the events of last night. She spares a moment to glance at the radio and consider checking in with Bellamy. But she decides that's probably not the best idea – she doesn't know whether he's awake right now, and if he's asleep, she doesn't want to disturb him.

She heads down the hallway to Kane's room, knocks soundly on the door. He emerges in a dressing gown, and she spares a moment to smile just a little. This is the leader of his people, and the man her mother loves. And here he is, still half asleep, clad in worn tartan fleece. He looks every inch the fond stepfather, this morning, with scarcely a trace of the Chancellor he is by day.

"Clarke?" He sounds puzzled. Of course he does – this is a ridiculous time to go around knocking on doors.

"Can I come in? There's something I need to talk to you about."

He gestures for her to enter, and points at a chair. She doesn't choose to sit. She stands instead, squaring herself up to her full height. She can do this.

"Bellamy's gone to look for Octavia. I helped him get out. You shouldn't send anyone to look for him."

Kane frowns. "He's not going to get very far. What if the black rain hits? How will he -"

"He's got a rover. And a month of rations for two people, and a nightblood shot. Oh, and two blankets. I stole all those things for him – he didn't want to take anything."

"You let him go? You _equipped_ him and let him go?"

"I didn't just let him go. I helped him." She says robustly. "It's important to him."

"And he's important to you." Kane concludes.

Clarke nods, wordless, trying not to cry. Tears would look weak right now, she's pretty sure.

"You really stole all those things for him?" She's not sure whether Kane sounds more angry or surprised.

"Yes. If you want to punish anyone, you should shocklash me. But you can't send anyone after him, _please_. You have to let him go. And it really was me that stole everything, I should pay the price."

Kane frowns ever more deeply. "I'm not shocklashing anyone, Clarke. You should know I've learnt my lesson there. I get it, message received. He's gone, you gave him the equipment. I just hope he stays safe out there."

Clarke is puzzled, now. "You're not angry?"

"Of course I'm not _angry_." Kane bites out, audibly exasperated. "I'm annoyed he didn't feel he could tell me himself. But I'm more worried about him than anything. And about Octavia, of course. And about how you're going to cope without him."

Clarke nods. She's surprised it turned out like this, but on reflection, perhaps she shouldn't be. Kane has definitely come a long way from the selfish and confrontational man she remembers on the Ark. In fact, now she comes to think of it, she couldn't ask for a better man to be her almost-stepfather.

Her conversation with Kane concluded, she says her goodbyes and moves on to radioing her mother. She heads back to her room to do that, using her own radio set. See – it's not only Bellamy she will speak to, with this.

She's sort of dreading telling her mother. This conversation will not be about logistics, theft or shocklashing. This conversation will be about feelings, she's pretty sure, and Clarke's not ready for that.

Sure enough, that turns out to be the truth. Abby starts off by offering her _sympathies_ , of all things, as if Bellamy were already dead and not just in mortal danger. And then she talks for a while about the solace of keeping in touch over the radio, compares her relationship with Kane to Clarke's relationship with Bellamy as she talks from her personal experience. That makes it even worse, of course, because it reminds Clarke that she and Bellamy have never discussed or defined what they are to each other. So if he dies out there, looking for Octavia, he will die never knowing how Clarke feels about him.

And then comes the most painful moment of all.

"I'll be home soon." Abby promises. "I'm leaving the island in a couple of days and then I'll be home to keep you company. We can support each other like family do." She says softly.

It's supposed to be an encouraging statement – so much is clear. But Clarke isn't encouraged in the slightest. For the first time since she let Bellamy drive out that gate – _helped_ him drive out that gate, in fact – she allows the emotions to rush in.

"He's my family too." She chokes out, tears beginning to flood her cheeks, breathing becoming rather a challenge.

That's how it goes on Earth. You decide someone is your family just as they're leaving you, off to wander into deadly danger. And then they die, more often than not, in Clarke's experience.

She breaks down, sobbing, but without Bellamy here to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you like Bellarke fic you might want to go vote in the Bellarke Fic Writer Awards. You can find them on Tumblr or there are links all over Twitter at the mo!


	4. Chapter four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Here's a chapter! Thanks to everyone who's left lovely comments and thanks to Stormkpr for being awesome! Happy reading!
> 
> Content note: reference to suicide

Bellamy has scarcely been gone thirty hours, but already Clarke is starting to build a new routine for the new situation. It's like that on the ground – adapt fast, or suffer the consequences. So now that her closest colleague is not physically at her side, they are figuring out new ways of working together.

She starts the morning with a shower, and with the shampoo Bellamy gave her as a going-away gift. At the time she was pretty hurt by that, she seems to remember – the idea he was planning to leave her with toiletries rather than a proper goodbye. But she's made her peace with it quickly, deciding that fragranced shampoo is a welcome luxury on the ground and that it was kind of sweet of Bellamy to get it for her. She likes the domesticity of it, too. Shampoo is a thing you buy for someone you're pretty close to, she thinks.

Showered and dressed, she reaches for the radio to wish Bellamy a good morning. They developed a sort of pattern yesterday where they would check in very briefly several times a day, and she wants them to keep it up. It makes him feel _closer_ , somehow, to be hearing from him sporadically throughout the day. And there's more to it than that, too. She likes the implications of them being in constant contact. She's watched her fair share of old Earth movies, and she knows that teenaged couples in romantic comedies used to send a hell of a lot of instant messages. This feels a bit like that, she thinks – only adapted for the end of the world.

"Bellamy? You awake?"

"I am now." He answers, evidently trying to tease her. She flushes a little, wonders what it would be like to have this conversation side-by-side in bed.

No. Head in the game, Clarke.

"Sorry. Were you still sleeping? I'll call later tomorrow."

"No, it's fine. I was up at dawn. Just joking around."

"Don't joke about that. You know I worry about whether you've slept enough and whether you're safe to drive." She's aware that she sounds peevish, but she really does worry about him.

"I promise I'm doing OK. I'm already up and driving. Tell me how your day is looking? You're taking nightblood to Azgeda, right?"

"Yeah. But I've got something else to do first." She swallows, wonders how to go about explaining the latest addition to her schedule. "I've got to give Jasper his nightblood shot. And a few of the others – Bree, Riley, that group."

There's a heavy pause. Clarke finds that she is picturing the thoughtful frown she knows must be on Bellamy's face, right now.

Then he speaks. "So they choose life?"

"They choose life." She confirms. "I thought it would take Jasper longer than this to... adjust to the new plan. But they all say they're with us. There's about twenty of them, and then the whole of Arkadia will be done." She very carefully avoids saying _all Skaikru_ , because she knows that Octavia has not had her serum yet.

"That's really good news, Clarke. That's something happy to start your day, for a change."

She considers it for a moment. Yes, of course, the news that a group of her friends and acquaintances have chosen to survive the end of the world alongside her is good news indeed. There has been too much death, and she understands better than anyone the toll this planet can take on the mind but she remains convinced that living is the best option.

But she's not sure it's going to be a happy start to the day.

"I think it might still be difficult. Deciding to live doesn't mean they're suddenly healed. And a situation like that – a big group talking about maybe choosing to die together? That's all kinds of screwed up."

"I know." He agrees. "Just trying to help you see the good in the world."

She smiles despite herself. "Thanks, Bellamy."

"It's what I do."

She gives a reluctant laugh. "You're right. Really – I know you were half teasing there, but it's true."

"I miss you too, Princess." He says, and she can virtually hear him roll his eyes at her. He only ever does use that nickname when he's affectionately exasperated, these days.

Another laugh, more genuinely joyful this time. "Go on. Let me get on with my day. I'll call you if I'm bored on the drive to Azgeda."

"I'll call you if I'm bored on the drive to nowhere." He echoes lightly.

With a couple of parting words, he is gone, and she is left to pull on her boots and make her way to breakfast.

…...

Clarke is a brave woman. She doesn't describe herself in those terms out of conceit or arrogance, but because there's really quite a lot of evidence that it's the truth. She's made a habit of putting herself in danger for the sake of the people she cares about.

But right now, she's trying not to shake with nerves at the thought of giving a simple injection.

The thing is, it's not such a simple injection after all. Sure, it will physically be much like every other jab she has ever given. But there's a lot of emotions tangled with politics going on here, as she prepares to give Jasper his nightblood serum.

She's not sure whether his suggestion that the young people might prefer to have a party for the end of days was a political protest or a mass epidemic of depression. She supposes that the honest answer is probably a bit of both – emotional ill-health and important decisions sadly go hand-in-hand all too often on the ground. But naturally she's pleased they have decided not to press ahead with it after all. She wonders why they changed their minds, just as much as she wonders why they thought dying together was a good idea in the first place.

Maybe she ought to ask.

She feels deeply guilty for a moment. She's not been a good friend to Jasper or any of the like-minded people she will give serum to this morning. And that hurts her, deep in her belly, because she is truly passionate about protecting her people. She hates to think that she's let them down, allowed them to spiral into desperation without doing anything to stop it.

Her hand creeps closer to the radio in her pocket. Bellamy would know what to say to her right now, she thinks. He'd say something about how you can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved, or he'd remind her that she's had a lot on her plate and she shouldn't consider herself personally responsible for everything.

Yes. That's done it. Turns out she doesn't even need to call him – they've grown so close in recent days that she can still feel reassured at the mere thought of hearing his affirming words.

She gathers her courage and heads to medical. Bravery is not the absence of fear but overcoming it, she reminds herself as she walks.

To her surprise, Jasper is already there. She didn't see that coming, she thinks, as she grabs a dose of serum and approaches him.

He greets her cheerfully enough. She wonders how to approach this conversation. She's pretty sure that diving straight in with impertinent questions about his wellbeing and motivations is not a good approach.

She gets to work wiping his arm with an antiseptic wipe, prepares to give the serum. The quietness between them feels solemn, but not exactly strained. She can do this, she decides.

"That foam bit was funny." She says quietly.

He jerks his head towards her, shocked. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Didn't really see it at the time – I was having a stressful day, you know? But thank you for reminding me it's OK to have fun once in a while."

He frowns at her. "You don't look like you're having much fun."

"No." She acknowledges. "But I will be. Just as soon as we all survive the death wave and get on with living again."

"You think it will really be like that?"

"Yeah. I'm going to _make_ it be like that."

Jasper laughs, a little hysterical. "I see how it is. It's not enough to order us around – now you're trying to order the _universe_ around."

She stiffens, bites her lip. That didn't go to plan. "Jasper -"

"I know. I know – this is what you do. And I for one am grateful I don't have to. So are you going to turn my blood black now or what?"

She nods, reaches for the needle. "This will sting a little."

"What's new? I should be used to the pain by now."

She wonders what to say to that. He's got a point – there's been a lot of pain on Earth. But there are good things, too. Beautiful sunsets, firm friendships. Found families. She thinks of Monty's laugh and Raven's tenacity and Bellamy's warmth, most of all.

She pricks at his skin with the needle, delivers the serum.

"There's good alongside the pain." She tells him firmly.

"Yeah. I know. That's why I'm here."

She nods. What can she add to that?

"Thanks, Clarke. Black blood's pretty badass, right? Shall I send the next one in?"

She nods, strong, almost _proud_. That's one step further on her mission to leave behind the demons of Mount Weather once and for all. And it's one step closer to welcoming Jasper back into her assortment of friends and family.

…...

Bellamy's getting bored of worrying.

He's been worrying about his sister all his life, more or less, and that's fine. He grew used to that, learnt how to manage the way anxiety was woven through his every waking thought and haunting nightmare. But now that he's added worry about the hundred in general and Clarke in particular to his list, it's getting a bit overwhelming. He just wants it to be over, wants a safe life and a cottage and no more end-of-days drama.

He thinks he might want to keep chickens, too. Or maybe that might be a bit much.

He finds himself wondering whether Clarke likes chickens, but then pushes that thought aside. He ought to be concentrating on things that matter here and now. He therefore decides to call her and ask how she's getting on. It's been a whole two hours or so since they spoke, which is unusually long, based on their recent track record.

"Clarke?"

She picks up right away. "Bellamy. Hey."

He tries not to sigh in relief too loudly. He doesn't want her to hear that he's become a little pathetic over her, recently. But he grins broadly and settles back in his chair as he drives.

"So how's Azgeda?" He asks her, tone carefully light. He suspects it's grim and somewhat frightening, but he doesn't want to bring her down even further by admitting that.

She hesitates a moment. "Not as bad as expected, actually. Roan's here." He bristles. He doesn't much like the idea that the infuriatingly arrogant and handsome king is grounds for Clarke saying her day is _not as bad as expected_.

"Roan? What's he doing there?"

She laughs. "Careful, Bellamy. He can hear you. Everyone can. He's here because he's the king, remember?"

"Yeah. I know that." He mutters, defensive, not comfortable enough to buy into her joke.

Suddenly Raven's voice is coming through the radio. "Calm down, Bellamy. He's not taken us hostage yet. And Clarke's spent the whole ride so far talking about you so I think you're good on every front." He hears Clarke giggle nervously in the background. He quite likes the idea that she can find the energy to giggle, despite the death wave bearing down on them.

"Great. Yeah." What else does a guy say to a sentence like that? "So how have you been, Raven?"

She snorts. "Fine. Just your average end-of-days dread, you know? How about you?"

"Yeah." He swallows. He's close with Raven, but not _that_ close. "I haven't found any good leads on O yet."

This time, it is Clarke's voice he hears. "You'll find her. I know you will." She tells him firmly. Bellamy allows himself, just for a moment, to imagine her snatching the radio out of Raven's hand for the sake of reassuring him as quickly as possible.

He likes that. It's a very comforting mental image, at a time when there's precious little comfort in his life.

"Thanks, Clarke. I'll keep trying. I'm not having much luck in the villages – I think I should try Polis soon."

"Yeah." He hears her take a deep breath. "I know you hate Polis. But it'll be worth it if you find her."

"Yeah. You're right." He admits. Admitting she's right comes much more easily than it used to, months ago, back when she first turned his world on its head.

"How are you doing otherwise?" She asks him – a little too brightly, he thinks. "Have you had plenty to eat? Are you – are you OK?"

"I'm doing alright. It's frustrating but – yeah. Not too bad. I actually really like driving the rover, so there's that."

"You do?" She asks the question in an encouraging tone.

"Yeah. I know it sounds silly but... it's like nothing else matters when I'm driving, you know? Just me and the road." He's vaguely aware that Raven and Roan and whoever else is in that rover right now can hear him. But, strangely, he finds that he doesn't much care, as long as he gets to share meaningful conversation with Clarke.

"That doesn't sound silly at all. I feel like that when I'm drawing." She tells him easily.

He grunts a sort of agreeing noise. It's good that she understood that. It makes him feel affirmed, encouraged, sort of like he has a sense of belonging. Like there's finally someone in his life who truly understands him.

He wonders if he dares to take it to the next level. Does he dare to say that he might like it even more, if he had a way to clear his mind and relax that wasn't built out of running errands for people? If there was anything in his life at all that existed for him, and him alone?

"We should make sure you get more time to read when all this is over." Clarke's voice interrupts his thoughts. "You deserve to get more time to yourself than just driving a rover. You like reading, right?"

He gapes, stunned. It's a good thing they're having this conversation over the radio, he thinks, because if she could see his face right now she'd know how head-over-heels in love he is with her.

Maybe she already does know that, he wonders. He's hardly subtle about it.

He clamps his jaw shut, fishes around for something to say. How is it that she understands him so perfectly, despite the distance between them? How did he survive all those years, before he had her living at his side?

What the hell will he do, if this doesn't work out? If they lose each other at the end of the world?

He clears his throat and tries to sound coherent. "Thanks, Clarke. I'd like that. You're right – I'd love to read more."

"We'll make it happen." She says, as if it's as simple as that. The funny thing is, she sounds so decisive about it that he almost believes it can be that easy. "What else do you have planned for after Praimfaya?"

He thinks about it for a moment. After everything she's done to make him feel so valued in recent days – telling him he deserves to take a break, reminding him he's more than his sister's keeper, calling him on the radio almost every hour – he's almost tempted to go all in. For a moment, he genuinely contemplates telling her he plans to build a life with her.

But then he shakes his head, feels his mouth fall into a frown. He can't do that. It's not fair to either of them to try to talk about something like that while they're physically far apart and waiting for the world to burn. What's more, they haven't a shred of privacy – he knows that Roan and Raven are listening in, and goodness only knows who else.

"I want to keep chickens." He offers, in the end. "Do you like chickens?"

She laughs, a loud and genuinely joyful sound. "No idea. I've never met one. But if you want to keep chickens, we can have a go at keeping chickens."

He feels a smile break out across his face, quite without his permission. There she goes again, throwing that casual _we_ into every conversation they share. As if they're going to be a package deal, from now on.

As if they belong together.

…...

Clarke writes a list that night.

It's easier than the last list she wrote in this office, at least. This is not a list that sorts who lives from who dies – at least, she hopes it won't turn out that way. This is a list of who will ride out the death wave in which location, and she therefore hopes that everyone on it will live. But it's true that they have no way of knowing that every shelter from the storm will be perfectly safe. She knows she'll never forgive herself if one of the locations turns out not to be survivable, and she has accidentally condemned a vast number of people to death.

Then again, there are plenty of other things she'll never forgive herself for either. One more can hardly make much difference now.

She starts with the first bunker she and Bellamy found with Jaha – that one isn't radiation proof, but it doesn't need to be as they all have nightblood now. It will keep out the fire and can be stocked with supplies, so it will be good enough. Ice Nation will run that bunker, with a few Sangedakru squeezed in to make up the numbers. She and Roan agreed that in the rover this afternoon – seeing as it seems to be difficult to convince his war chiefs to keep an alliance for long, they will get around the problem by not trying to live in close proximity with loads of other clans while the death wave burns. Clarke realises this is no long term solution, and even feels a little like she's giving in by doing this. But frankly she does not want to spend a month below ground arguing with Azgeda warriors. Some battles are just not worth fighting – at least not right this minute.

The more difficult bit is dividing up the rest of the grounders and Skaikru between Arkadia and the Polis bunker. Arkadia is familiar, home, and ought to feel safe. But it's been patched up in a rush since the fire. And the Polis bunker is big and well-equipped, and they have decided that it can take far more people than its intended capacity as they will only be there for a month. But Skaikru will be needed there to run the air scrubbers and the water system, even if they are using mostly stored food instead of the hydrofarm.

In short, it's a challenge. She's worried that Arkadia might not be entirely safe, but they need to use it or not everyone will live. And she knows strong leadership will be needed in both Arkadia and Polis to see them through this nightmare.

She starts with that question – leadership. She writes her own name on the list for Polis not to save herself but because she doesn't trust anyone else to hold the alliance together under pressure. It's much easier to write her name today than it was on that earlier list, because this has nothing to do with whether or not she thinks she deserves to live. It's about whether she thinks everyone else deserves to live, or whether she wants them to spend that month at each other's throats.

That means Kane ought to be at Arkadia, she figures. She hesitates a bit over her mother – would she rather be with Kane, or with Clarke? And where is she needed most? Clarke settles on putting her in Arkadia, figures out that Jackson therefore needs to be in Polis. And so it goes until all the leaders and medics and engineers are accounted for, and then she arranges everyone else around them by family groups.

Well – all but two.

She moves onto the grounders next. She wants Indra with her in Polis, and naturally Gaia must come with her too. She puts Niylah on the list for Arkadia – she's well known and respected by the many grounders who use her business, and a promising nurse as well. That means she'll be useful in Arkadia. And so on and on, until everyone is allocated.

Except those last two.

She needs to do it. She just needs to write down Bellamy and Octavia, on one list or another. Most of the hundred will be at Arkadia, so she figures they might prefer to be there.

Needless to say, she wants them in Polis.

She hesitates a moment. Maybe they would _want_ to be in Polis. Indra will be there, and Octavia is like a daughter to her. And Bellamy will follow Octavia, of course, so that would all make sense. She tries to tell herself that's a good reason to put them on the Polis list, that she's not being at all selfish.

It's only a month. It doesn't matter where Bellamy is for a month – just that he lives.

That's what decides it, in the end. He needs to live, and she remains a little sceptical about the state of the walls of Arkadia. She writes his name on the list for Polis, Octavia straight after him. She tries not to think too hard about the fact she was willing to write her own mother on the list for Arkadia, but couldn't bear to do the same for Bellamy.

And then she sets down her pen and calls him.

"Bellamy? You still awake?" She asks quietly.

"Mhmm." She's fairly convinced that means he wasn't awake, but for once in her life she needs to talk to him even more than she needs him to be well-rested.

"I just did the lists for who will live where during the death wave." She says, trying for a neutral tone.

"Yeah? Where will we be?" He asks. She allows herself to wonder for a moment whether that _we_ refers to herself and him, or to him and his sister. No. She mustn't dwell on it – that way lies madness, and she's struggling enough with her sanity as it is, since she came to Earth.

"I've got you and Octavia in Polis." She tells him.

"With you, right? I mean, I'm guessing that's where you'll be?"

"Yeah. I'll be there, and Indra. Jackson, Miller, and Raven too. But not that many other Skaikru."

"That's OK. It's not supposed to be a party, is it? As long as I'm with the people I care about most that's all that matters to me."

She feels her cheeks warm a little at his implication, notes that her mouth is crinkling up into a smile. For a couple of weeks now she has known on a logical level that she is one of the people he cares about the most. But she's really starting to feel the truth of it in her heart, now, as they share this late night conversation.

She wonders whether the hour is the reason he said it. He's always more open and vulnerable at night, somehow. Easier to get close to, perhaps. One of these nights she's determined to sleep next to him and find out whether there is even more to this side of him.

"Yeah. At least we'll be together." She dares to say.

"Yeah. We can spend the time making plans for those chickens." He jokes lightly.

She laughs. "You know, I'm pretty sure that was Miller's thing first. Didn't he used to talk about chickens, back when we first landed?"

Bellamy snorts. "Not to me he didn't. He only ever used to talk to me about guns and guard training. I guess it's a good thing we've both grown up since then."

She makes an agreeing sort of noise, lets the easy silence sit for a moment. This conversation is so much like the comfort they shared that night they wrote the first list – only even better somehow. Bellamy may not be physically present, may not be squeezing her shoulder, but their emotional closeness is so much deeper and more honest these days that she can scarcely believe how far they've come.

She's proud of them.

Just for a moment, she wonders about saying it. For a couple of heartbeats, she contemplates confessing something about love.

But then Bellamy clears his throat and the moment passes.

"Get some sleep." He says softly. "We can talk more in the morning."

"Yeah. Sorry for waking you."

"Don't be. It's always good to hear from you. But you need to get some rest." It's typical, she thinks, that they're both trying to protect each other from distance, here.

"I know. You too. Sleep well."

"Night."

She goes to bed feeling like a giddy young girl in the heat of her first crush, that night. She lies there for long minutes and stares at the ceiling and relives every word she has shared with Bellamy today. It's the silliest thing, to be feeling the excitement of love as the world is ending.

She's not silly very often, she's pretty sure. But right now she's almost _proud_ to salvage some frivolous joy from this living hell.

…...

Bellamy figures he's due some good luck for a change.

To be fair, he's been thinking that for months now – or possibly even years. But right this moment, as he leaves the rover outside Polis and starts walking determinedly into the city streets, he's feeling even more convinced of it. He almost feels _optimistic_ , in fact.

Presumably that won't last.

His good mood holds strong as he asks around in bars, listens in on conversations in the crowded market place. His Trig isn't great, but it's serviceable enough to understand the gist of a conversation.

He hates Polis, and has nothing but bad memories of coming here to save Clarke and have his concern thrown back in his face. But maybe that's why he's feeling so improbably bright today. Maybe it's because things have changed for the better between him and Clarke, because they have a distinctly _functional_ relationship right now, and because that's turning his sad memories of this place on their head.

He feels even better, as he overhears a conversation in one crowded inn. At least, he thinks it's an inn – he's not clear on whether the place sells drink or clothing or beds for the night or all three. But whatever the place is, someone is complaining about Skairipa.

"Skairipa? I'm looking for her. Where is she?" He asks, in urgent, clunky Trig. 

"Nobody knows." Comes the answer.

"But has anyone seen her? Where has she been?"

"Last I heard, she was heading towards Trishanakru lands."

Just for a moment, he allows himself to wilt in relief. It seems he was right to give Polis a second chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to everyone who has said encouraging things about this story so far! And thanks as ever to Stormkpr for betaing. Happy reading!

Something has changed in Bellamy's life, these last couple of days. It's been a pretty sudden change, and if someone had suggested such a thing to him last week he'd have been absolutely shocked. And yet, it has happened.

He's started dreading Clarke's radio calls.

It's not that he doesn't love her, or treasure her concern for him, or enjoy listening to the sound of her voice. It's just that she's started getting more overtly panicked about his wellbeing, as the death wave draws closer. And as a result she's started asking him to come home at least once most calls, and he can't really deal with that. Apart from anything else it scares him to hear Clarke, who is usually so controlled in her emotions, fretting over him so desperately. There was one call last night, as they were both heading to bed, where she even started weeping noisily as she told him she needed him in Polis.

That's something he was not prepared to deal with, to say the least.

As he wakes up this morning and prepares to face the day, he knows today's good morning call will be worse than any he has shared with her so far. The death wave is due tomorrow night, and time really is running out. If he knows Clarke half as well as he thinks he does, this will be the point where she breaks down and tries to _order_ him to go safely to the Polis bunker.

He can't do that.

He can't give up now, because his sister is still out here somewhere. He's been searching Trishanakru land carefully since he got that clue in Polis, and sure enough, he has heard more whispers about Octavia's location along the way. Ever more people are telling him he's on the right track, pointing into the woods and telling him she's just beyond the next river crossing.

He makes a snap decision. He won't call Clarke, this morning. She'll call him in her own time, but there's no sense in inviting her anger and anxiety any sooner than he needs to.

He starts driving, tries not to think too much about that decision. He understands why Clarke is worried, of course he does. He'd be at least as frantic if she was out here. And clearly he's frantic about his sister – that's why he's still driving around this godforsaken patch of gradually irradiated woodland. He supposes it's kind of flattering or even _moving_ that Clarke cares about him so much as to be pestering him to come home. No one has ever put his physical wellbeing above every other concern in the world quite so firmly as that before.

Sure enough, he's barely been underway an hour when she calls.

"Bellamy? Are you awake?"

"Yeah." He keeps it short, honest.

"Are you avoiding me?" She guesses, audibly hurt.

"Yeah." It's the truth, but it pains him to say it. "Not because – not... yeah. I don't think it's doing us any good to talk when I know all you'll say is some order to come back to Polis."

There's a heavy pause. He wonders if she's angry, whether maybe he shouldn't have put it so bluntly as that.

But then she breaks the silence.

"I'm not ordering you. I'm _begging_ you." She chokes out the words.

He gasps in a shocked breath. He wasn't expecting that. He didn't mean to upset her so very much. "Clarke -"

"I get it, OK? I get it, and I said I'd support you. But I can't support _this_ , Bellamy. I can't support you throwing your life away for her. Come back to Polis, _please_. I need you here. Maybe that's selfish of me, I don't know. But I think you deserve to live for yourself for once, too, rather than die for your sister."

He stops driving. He has to. He just stops the rover, right there, in the middle of the track, and rests his forehead tiredly on the steering wheel. He can't do this. He can't listen to Clarke mourn him when he's not even dead yet. And he can't talk, damn it, because there are tears in his eyes and clogging his throat.

"I'm sorry." For some reason Clarke is now apologising. "I know that – that was a lot. And last night, too. I know you never asked for me to be this... clingy."

With that, he finds his voice.

"I'll come back." He promises, shaky but sure. "I promise. I'll be there before you lock the door. I'm less than a day's drive away. I can look for her today and still make it back tomorrow. And then – then I'll come back to you." He swallows thickly. "Just – don't aplogise for caring, OK? It's – it means a lot. We're good."

"We are?" She echoes, sounding less than convinced.

"We are. I'll see you tomorrow. I promise."

He can almost taste that it's a lie the moment he says it.

…...

Clarke knows these will be the most hectic thirty-six hours of her life. That's probably a good thing, she figures. It means she cannot entirely fixate on worrying about Bellamy.

She starts with adjusting the lists of residents for each shelter. The nightblood has all been distributed now, so they have their final numbers and she can alter the lists accordingly. There will be significantly fewer people than she was allowing for, because so many of the grounders chose not to take the synthetic nightblood.

She tries not to take that personally. Faith is important to people, she knows. And it's something that a young blonde woman who fell out of the sky is not going to be able to change at short notice. So it's not a failing on her part that most of the religiously conservative residents of Shallow Valley did not choose to take the serum, for example, nor that there were a number of Sangedakru who refused. They will save everyone who wants to be saved – or everyone who was willing and able to rethink their religion quickly enough to be saved. In another life, she thinks, she would have liked to have had enough time to talk at length with those who refused the serum, try to understand their worldview and see if there was another way to save them. She knows that Indra and Gaia did a lot of work discussing the issues of synthetic nightblood with the grounders, and that it's largely thanks to them that so many will be saved.

She sighs. It can't be helped. She crosses hundreds of Liwouda Kliron Kru off the list for the Polis bunker.

Once she's fixed the list, there are the last few boxes to load into the rovers and ship to Polis. She goes to help with that right away, because it's urgent.

Also because she's not feeling brave enough to call Bellamy again.

No. There's no sense in dwelling on her concern for him, or her worry that she might have damaged their relationship with her excessively emotional displays in the last day or so. She's ashamed of herself for losing her cool with him. She's supposed to be capable of remaining calm and seeing her people through a crisis.

She meets Miller in the hangar bay, evidently already almost finished with loading the rovers.

"Bellamy's still out there?" He asks. She supposes he must read the worry on her face.

"Yes." She says shortly.

"He'll be back. He always is. You know him – loyal to a fault. He won't let you down."

That makes it worse, somehow. It makes her feel even more guilty for burdening Bellamy with her anxieties. But Miller is a good friend, and means well, so Clarke nods. She notes that the business of loading the rover appears to be all but done – in fact, it looks as though they will be ready to set out at any moment – so she goes to take her leave of her mother instead of hanging around to help.

She's not looking forward to saying goodbye to her mother. They've had a complicated relationship, since that oxygen fault was discovered. Sometimes on the same side, sometimes at odds. Sometimes doctor and apprentice, sometimes chancellor and rebel, sometimes leader and disapproving protester.

And yet always, somehow, mother and daughter.

Clarke knocks on the door of Abby's quarters, enters when she hears a call of welcome.

"Mum. Hey. We're about to leave."

Abby nods, carefully calm. Clarke supposes she must have been preparing for this moment. "Stay safe." She says, tone level.

Clarke nods in turn. "You too."

There's a pause. That wasn't a great goodbye, Clarke thinks. Is there more still to come? Or is this typical of the kind of dysfunctional relationship a mother and child have on the ground?

No. There's more. There's her mother falling forwards to wrap her in a fierce hug, holding her tight, voice heavy with emotion as she says something rather more personal.

"I love you, Clarke. I love you so much."

"Love you too, Mum." It's harder to say it than it ought to be, she thinks.

"You'll be OK. This isn't like sending you to the ground was. That bunker is safe and this time I know that your friends will take care of you." Clarke thinks she sounds like she's trying to convince herself more than anything. Or maybe it's a peace offering – an attempt to explain that she gets it, now. She understands that the younger generation are ready to take care of each other and their people through any crisis the ground can throw at them.

"We'll be fine." Clarke says, as she pulls away from the hug. "I hope everything runs OK here."

"I hope the structure is up to it." Abby says darkly.

Clarke grits her teeth. She can't think about that, now. She can't think about her mother under a flimsy, fire-damaged roof, nor Bellamy out in the woods. Above all, she can't think of the substantial risk of losing both of them, in the next few hours.

"I should go." She says. That's what she does, right? She runs when the going gets tough.

"Of course. Take care."

With one more hug, Clarke sets out for the hangar bay once more.

The rover is loaded and ready to go, so she hops in the back. Miller drives, and Jackson is in the front seat alongside him. They're taking the last rations and medical supplies to Polis today. Everyone else – and everything else they should need – is already there.

She doesn't enjoy the drive. It's only a couple of hours, but that's a couple of hours sitting still when she feels instinctively that there are other things that still need to be done. They are all things that will have to wait for her arrival in Polis, though, like helping Jackson set up med bay, or meeting with the other clans' ambassadors, or simply finding a bed to sleep in tonight.

She's surprised when her radio crackles into life.

"Clarke?" It's Bellamy, of course.

"Hey." She greets him, uncharacteristically nervous.

"Are you in the rover? Did I time it right? I don't want to bother you if you're working on something." She smiles slightly to herself at that evidence of his thoughtfulness, that he's been waiting to call her until he knew she wouldn't be trying to do anything else.

"I'm in the rover. Great timing." She assures him.

"That's good. How's the view?"

She looks out of the back window. The view is crap, but she's not sure how to go about telling him that. The sky is glowing with an odd rusty tint she doesn't like in the slightest. It would make a novel and interesting painting, she thinks, were that novelty not outweighed by horror.

"Very orange." She offers in the end.

"Yeah. Same here, too."

Silence falls. She doesn't like that. They've been chatting to each other a mile a minute almost every moment since he left Arkadia last week. So it hurts that they are silent now.

As if he has read her mind, Bellamy speaks up.

"I'm not trying to hurt you." He mutters, short. "I just – she's my family."

Clarke hesitates. She gathers her courage. She opens her mouth to speak. "I'm your family too." She says, hoping against hope that it's true.

There's another beat of silence, somehow less horrifying than the last. She can virtually hear Bellamy thinking, processing.

"You are. That's right." He sucks in a loud breath. "You're – yeah."

It's not the most encouraging response he could have given her in that moment, all things considered. But it is, she supposes, better than laughing out loud at her unaccustomed neediness.

…...

They are greeted by chaos on their arrival into Polis.

Clarke knew they would be. That's what happens when you try to move thousands of strangers temporarily into a bunker built for twelve hundred. If it's this busy in the city up topside – people literally falling over each other as they try to flood towards the bunker with their belongings – she hates to think how frantic it will be inside. Indra has charge of settling everyone in, and Clarke knows she has the pragmatism and no-nonsense attitude to do a great job of it. There's no one else on this Earth she would have trusted to cram extra bedrolls into every dorm, and cram too many people into those makeshift beds.

For the first time, Clarke wonders what her own sleeping arrangements will be. In all the madness of making sure there are enough supplies for everyone, she never took a moment to consider where she might live this month. But she's got used to having her own private room, and no doubt this is going to be quite an adjustment. Probably she'll be with her friends, she supposes. Indra has likely allocated her a room with Bellamy and Octavia and Raven. And probably Jackson and Miller and Murphy and Emori and half of Podakru, she thinks wryly. That's the only way they'll all fit in their temporary sanctuary.

Clarke jumps out of the rover the moment Miller draws to a halt. That's partly because she wants to go help, and partly because he and Jackson have been deep in conversation since they left Arkadia and she doesn't want to get in the way. If there's any chance of them finding happiness together while the world is ending, then good luck to them.

She heads for the bunker door, then weaves her way through the throng crowding the atrium as best she can. It's not just people, either. There are items of furniture, the occasional goat, and even what appears for all the world to be a small tree.

Yeah. That's probably not such a good idea. She approaches the two burly men who are carrying the tree and tries to decide what to say.

"Hello." She begins, cautious.

They look her up and down, evidently assessing. Perhaps working out who she is.

"This is our tree." One of them advises her, a warning in his tone.

Yes. She can see that. "Your tree?" She tries to sound more curious than rude.

"Trees are sacred to the Broad Leaf people." His companion contributes, slightly less aggressive. "We couldn't bring the oldest ones. But we carried this one all the way here. A young apple sapling."

Right. OK then. This is, it occurs to her, a unique moment. This is either the perfect moment for some excellent diplomacy, or a dangerous opportunity to ruin the alliance and burn a bridge or two.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" She offers brightly. "I'm stronger than I look."

They both frown at her, unconvinced.

"We had a holy tree on the Ark." She tells them.

That helps. There are nods, although not many of them. There is, she thinks, the beginning of common ground, and perhaps even of understanding.

She tries one last time. "Kane's mother was the keeper of the tree. You know Kane? Our Chancellor? The one who bears the brand of the coalition? He used to tend to our holy tree when he was a boy."

"He did?" The marginally friendlier of the two men sounds interested.

"He did. It was very important to him." She exaggerates, but only slightly. It has been important to him since then as a way of remembering his mother, after all. "I know he'd love to talk to you about it. Let me introduce you to him when we're all living on the ground again."

"I'd like that."

"Great. You sure I can't help you carry it?"

"We carried it this far." The more brusque man reminds her, proud.

Well. That's that settled, it seems.

Time to see what can be done about those goats.

…...

The goats aren't sacred, it turns out. And seeing as they don't have the resources to feed them, they are slaughtered to feed the population of the bunker instead. Clarke used to find the animals she saw in old Earth footage and photos cute, she's pretty sure. But these days she's too preoccupied, too pragmatic, to worry about the death of a cute – and very nutritious – goat for long.

She's having a good day, here. She's achieved a good deal. A couple of minor crises averted, more food supplies procured. She feels like she's on a roll, as she goes to put her small backpack in her new room. Sure enough, it turns out she will be sharing with pretty much everyone she knows from Arkadia, and a handful of strangers to boot.

But on the plus side, the pallet next to hers has been allocated to Bellamy. So at least they'll live through this overcrowded hell side-by-side.

She's full of confidence as she leaves the dorm again and sets out down the hallway. Her next stop is a meeting with the ambassadors of the other clans in the head office of the bunker. Everything's going about as well as could be expected, she thinks. Everything's going to be OK.

That's when she hears the child weeping.

She follows the sound, finds the strangest sight. There, in the hallway, a young girl crouches, crying, curled in on herself as she slumps against the wall. All around her, people are moving, lugging their belongings around, chatting and shouting, as if they haven't a care in the world.

As if they haven't noticed the girl at all.

Clarke hesitates for a moment. She doesn't consider interacting with young children to be her calling in life. But there's no way she can leave this girl alone and weeping. Maybe it's because she remembers what happened to Charlotte, or maybe there's something about this child in particular that pulls at her gut. Either way, it takes her scarcely a second to start moving towards the girl, fighting her way through the crowds, elbowing people aside.

She doesn't have much of a plan. If Bellamy were here, she thinks, he'd probably have some useful advice to offer about dealing with crying small children. But he's not here – he's outside, being a stubborn self-sacrificing _idiot_ – so Clarke picks the girl up bodily and carries her a little way away from the crowds.

Huh. She's heavier than she looked. She's maybe five years old or so, scrawny and a bit bedraggled. But it turns out she's not particularly light.

Clarke's not sure whether carrying a kid who's breaking down is the right thing to do. She's just acting from some instinctive feeling that leaving her crying in a crowd is probably a mistake. She finds a much quieter room – some kind of workshop, she thinks – and finally sets the girl down.

Wow. Much heavier than she looked. Clarke is pretty strong after all these months on the ground, but it turns out that carrying children around a bunker at the end of a long few days is something of a challenge. Clarke stretches out her back, frowns down at the girl.

She's still crying.

"I'm Clarke." She offers. She chooses Trig, because she very much doubts this child has learnt any English yet.

The child does not answer.

"I'm Skaikru." Clarke continues, tenacious. "I like drawing. Oh, and trees. You know the Broad Leaf people have a sacred tree with them? I like that. Part of the forest will survive."

The child is unimpressed. Also crying.

Clarke is becoming slightly exasperated now. It really should be Bellamy dealing with this situation. Could she call him, perhaps? Could he talk to the girl over the radio?

She gathers her courage and tries one last time. "I'm sorry you're sad. I know we don't know each other. But I'd like to help if I can."

"You can't help." The girls speaks at last. "I'm Shallow Valley Clan."

Ah. Shallow Valley. Where no one accepted nightblood, where everyone was determined to die in the faith. This girl is, presumably, one of very few survivors. She's about to lose everything she's ever known, and she's only a young child.

Sometimes, Clarke thinks, Earth really sucks.

"I can try to help." Clarke offers feebly. "I like helping people." It's almost the truth. She feels compelled to help people – is that the same as liking it?

The girl looks up at her, frowning. She's still crying, but a little less frantically, now she is out of the crowd of people.

"I'm Madi." She says.

Well, then. It looks like Clarke is taking a small child with her to this ambassadors' meeting. Because there's no way in hell she can leave Madi alone now. There's no way she can just put her in the dorm, sit her next to her bed and promise to come home soon. This girl has been abandoned by her own parents, Clarke realises, who chose their faith over staying with their daughter.

All at once, Clarke decides something. She sets aside her usual pragmatism in favour of making a frankly impulsive vow to herself.

She is never going to abandon this child. She swears it.

…...

Clarke hasn't called Bellamy as often as usual since she arrived in Polis. The combination of settling everyone into the bunker and finding Madi has absorbed all of her time. But she makes a point of calling him first thing the following morning, because time is running out. The death wave will hit this evening. He needs to drive to Polis now, otherwise he simply won't make it.

Everything will be fine, she tries to tell herself. He promised he would come home in time. She just needs to remind him of that now.

She checks that Madi is still sleeping, then takes the radio and slips from the dorm. She wants to be private for this conversation – or as private as possible, in this overcrowded bunker. She finds a small supply room, lets herself in and sits on the floor.

"Bellamy? Are you awake?" She asks into the radio.

"I've been awake since before dawn." He replies immediately. "Gotta make the most of the time."

She frowns, confused. "Time? You still have plenty of time to get here if you leave now."

There's a pause. Clarke can hear her pulse in her ears.

"No. I mean – time to look for O. Time to find her before it's too late."

Clarke takes a deep breath. She lets it out as slowly as she can, but not slowly enough. She kicks her booted toes hard against a shelf, seeking desperately for some way of exorcising her sudden frustration.

Then she has a go at speaking.

"You said you'd be here in time." She reminds him, firm.

"I know. I will. I just need to – just let me find her." He sounds desperate, she thinks, and it scares her. "I swear I'm so close, Clarke. I've definitely found her trail. I just need to -"

"Bellamy. Please. Use your damn head – do you hear yourself? You're desperate to find her, and I get that. But you don't know you're close, that's just the desperation speaking." She can hear her voice rising, feel her anger and frustration and utter horror spiralling away from her.

"Clarke, I am. I'm telling you. I'll find her this morning and then – then we'll be back in time."

"You promised you'd come back." She reminds him, aware she sounds peevish. "You promised me you'd be here with me. You can't – you can't -"

"I will come back." He bites out. "I will. I'm not going to – to leave you, OK? I'm not making you do this alone."

She tries to remember how to breathe. Bellamy promises he will come home, and she's never known him break his word to her before. Maybe he's right. Maybe he really can find his sister this morning and then drive back here in the nick of time.

Or maybe she was right, and that's just desperation speaking.

She chooses her next words with care.

"Please stay safe, OK? Please do everything you can to stay alive. I want us to meet again in _this_ life."

"We will." She hears him suck in a breath. "But if we don't -"

"We _will_." She tells him, not willing to hear him talk about any other possibility.

"Yeah. We will. I'll see you tonight."

He concludes the call, then. He just sets down the radio, she imagines, as if it was nothing. He keeps driving, presumably, entirely occupied with the business of finding his sister.

Clarke does not keep moving, though. She does not carry straight on with the business of normal life. She sits in her supply closet, kicks at that same shelf. She cries – not loudly, or messily, but just _sadly_. She cries at the idea of losing the only person who has ever truly understood her, supported her, and mostly even seems to _like_ her. She cries because losing him suddenly seems like a very real possibility, in this moment.

And then she wipes her eyes, puts her leader face back on. She leaves her hiding place, and goes to learn how to be an ambassador and a foster mother and a thousand other things she is ill-qualified even to attempt.

…...

Bellamy hates himself quite a lot, as the morning draws on. In fact he sinks deeper into self-loathing with every minute that passes. It's not a new feeling, of course – he's always been his own worst enemy. But never before has he felt failure on quite this level. He's failed in his essential mission to find his sister. He's failed Clarke along the way, and feels ever more worried that he might fail her in the worst of ways and find himself stranded out here when the death wave hits.

But he simply cannot turn back without finding his sister.

That's why he doesn't call Clarke again. He cannot face their usual regular check-ins, when he knows he has nothing but bad news to offer her. He cannot endure another horrific conversation where she begs him to come home and he cannot say yes.

Midday comes and goes. He half expects Clarke to call and mark the time, pointing out that this really is his last chance to turn for Polis.

She never does. That hurts, somehow. It's stupid, because part of him doesn't want her to waste her breath, but part of him is awfully upset that she doesn't care enough to be counting down the seconds till he reaches the point of no return.

It's a funny feeling, as it becomes afternoon. He supposes this means he's going to die. He supposes there is no point turning back now, because he won't reach Polis in time. He supposes he might as well stay and follow his sister's trail a bit longer.

And why hasn't Clarke called?

He drives a bit longer.

He can scarcely believe it when he finally does find his sister. All these days of searching, and it turns out she wasn't so far away after all. She's actually on Trikru territory, just about, in a shallow cave. She's in a bad way, radiation sickness already well-advanced, unconscious and breathing shallowly as she lies in a pool of vomit.

He radios Clarke.

"I found her." He says without preamble. "She's really sick. What do I do? Do I still give her the serum?"

"Yeah. It might well still help her. It has to be better than not trying at all."

And that, right there, is why he loves Clarke. He's spent the morning ignoring her, spent the last two days ignoring her wishes. And yet here she is, calmly and pragmatically and compassionately issuing medical advice about his sister all the same. Dependable and loyal to the last, no matter what he does to hurt her.

"OK. Thanks."

There's an awkward silence as he gives the injection. And then he's busy scooping Octavia's limp body up in his arms and carrying her back to the rover, so he can't talk to Clarke then, either. He cannot even begin to say everything he's thinking. He's so sorry for everything she must be going through right now, so horrified that he's found his sister too late so neither of them will make it back to Polis. He simply doesn't know what the hell to do or say, in this heartbreaking moment.

Clarke helps him out, of course. She always does, even when he least deserves it.

"What will you do now?" She asks, voice too quiet. "Have you got a plan?"

He swallows. "There's no point me driving to Polis, is there?"

"No." She admits. It's a short word, followed by a long silence.

He starts driving. He's not sure where he's driving, barely taking in the familiar landscape around TonDC as he barrels along the road to nowhere.

"Where are you?" She asks, still sounding rather small.

"Trikru land. Near TonDC."

She gasps. He's not sure whether that's a good thing or not. It's hard to be sure of such things, when the sky is stained orange and he's staring death in the face. When his sister is unconscious in the back of the rover and Clarke is unhappy in a hole in the ground.

"The art supply store." She suggests in a rush. "That small bunker Finn found. Could you get there, Bellamy? Could you make it there in time?"

Yes. Yes he could. He will make it there in time if he has to run and carry Octavia the whole way on his shoulders. If there's a way for them to live, for him to see Clarke again, then he's damn well going to make sure it happens.

"Yeah. That's a good call, Clarke. We'll make it. And I still have all the supplies you gave me in case this happened."

"I know you too well." She muses sadly.

He laughs, a hollow, hysterical sound. "Yeah. God, Clarke. I – I -" He swallows, tries again. "Thank you so much for suggesting that. We'll be OK, I promise. We'll see you again next month."

"You promised you'd see me tonight." She reminds him. It doesn't sound like a reprimand so much as a regret, he thinks.

"I know. I didn't mean to – yeah. I know you're going to tell me you don't want to hear it, but there's something I need you to know, OK? There's something I need to tell you before the radiation hits. I love you, Clarke. I'm so in love with you. So I swear I'll find a way to survive this and see you again when it's through."

He gets to the end of his speech, surprised. He rather expected Clarke to interrupt him before he could confess his love for her. That's what she's always done before now, every time he's attempted to broach the subject.

It takes him a second or two to realise it. She didn't interrupt, because she's not saying anything. She's not saying anything, because the radio has cut out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you lovely people who have left lovely comments on this fic so far, and thank you to Stormkpr for all this betaing! Happy reading!

Clarke is trying not to freak out.

She knows there's no reason to freak out, not really. Bellamy was near a small bunker, so that should be fine. He and Octavia should be able to shelter there with all their supplies while the death wave burns. And the radio cutting out isn't worrying news, exactly. The engineering team did warn her that such technology would start failing as the death wave approaches.

She can't freak out, anyway. She hasn't the time to freak out. She has people to lead, meetings to chair. An alliance to hold together with hopes and prayers and her own bare hands.

But she's freaking out all the same. She thought Bellamy would be here to help her through all those things. But that's not even the half of it – more than anything else, she's freaking out because she doesn't absolutely know he's safe. Sure, he said he was near the bunker and that he thought he'd make it, and he's not in the habit of hiding the truth to spare her feelings. But now the radio has cut out, she has no way of checking whether he's actually reached safety in time.

She won't know until next month, presumably.

She swallows down tears. He's fine. He's _probably_ fine.

He has to be fine.

He has to be fine, otherwise the last words she said to him were some peevish reprimand for him not coming back when he said he would. And there's no way that's happening. It's simply not acceptable. She has other last words in mind for him – words of love, to be shared at the end of a long and happy life together when this mess is over.

She wonders what his last words were trying to be, before they got cut off. It sounded like another one of those moments where he was trying to say something important about his feelings. Why on Earth did she always cut him off on those previous attempts, anyway? Sure, feelings are frightening. But nothing like as frightening as being locked in a bunker without him, with no idea if she'll ever see him again.

With no idea whether she'll ever be able to tell him she loves him after all.

She gives herself a shake, tries gamely to paste her leader face back on. She can't freak out, and that was starting to look a lot like freaking out. She needs to get back to the dorm and tell her friends the news.

She tells Miller first. She walks into the dorm, checks that Madi is not panicking. She's not _panicking_ so much as snuffling softly, so Clarke squeezes her shoulder and heads over to Miller. It's strange, she thinks, how quickly it has become natural to share a little physical reassurance with the child, even if she still doesn't feel comfortable enough to try to talk about the loss of her parents and her people.

Miller is sitting on his bed. He looks up at her expectantly, clearly reading that she has something to say.

She sinks onto the pallet at his side.

"Bellamy's stranded." She mutters stiffly.

All at once, Miller jumps to attention. "You mean he's not going to make it? You mean -"

"He says he can get to that small bunker Finn found near the dropship." She soothes. She should have broken that news more gently, she thinks. Miller and Bellamy are close, and that probably sounded rather brutal. But in her defence, she's a bit too emotionally wrung out to think of such things right now.

Miller nods heavily.

"He found Octavia. She's got bad radiation sickness but with the serum, who knows what might happen?"

"So the best case scenario is that he spends a month trapped in a tiny bunker with the sister who tried to beat him to a pulp a couple of months ago." Miller summarises darkly.

"Yeah." Clarke has to acknowledge that, put like that, even the best case scenario is pretty grim.

"At least he has something to look forward to." Miller tries for some brightness. "At least he knows we're all looking forward to seeing him again. At least he knows he's going to have a long life raising chickens with you."

Clarke gives a startled laugh. She rather wonders how that chicken rumour has got around so quickly. She supposes she has either Raven or Roan to thank, and her money is very much on Roan.

Her conversation with Miller concluded, she heads back over to her pallet and to Madi on the other side of the dorm. It's evening now, and Madi is sort of half-napping, evidently exhausted by a long couple of days. Clarke doesn't blame her, but there's no way she herself will sleep any time soon. She's too busy wondering whether Bellamy is dead, and whether her mother is dead, and whether anyone she loves is still breathing outside of the precious few friends she has for company in this damn hole in the ground.

She's pleased she broke the news to Miller first. Miller is a guy with cynical humour, who always tries to look on the bright side if there is even the slightest bright side to be found. So of course he cheered her up ever so slightly with a joke about chickens. That's a good thing, she decides.

Maybe he'll tell the others. Maybe she won't have to tell Raven or Jackson or Indra.

Clarke wonders about taking a shower. That might help her relax, although she imagines there will be a long queue for the washrooms with this many people crammed into the bunker. Considering the matter, she reaches for her backpack and pulls out some clothes. She pulls out, too, the bottle of shampoo Bellamy gave her when he left the camp.

Yes. A shower would be a good idea. She always finds that there's something comforting about being able to smell the shampoo on her hair. It's like a reminder of the depth of their friendship that she gets to carry around with her all day.

Friendship? Who's she kidding? Platonic friends don't gift each other scented shampoo in the midst of a nuclear apocalypse, she's pretty sure, and nor do they try to babble out important confessions over a radio at the end of the world.

Before she can take her shower, Madi interrupts. Clarke supposes that is something she had better get used to, now that she has care of a child. Young children do not arrange their schedules according the the convenience of adults.

"Clarke? Why are you sad?"

Clarke shakes her head, startled. She didn't realise her emotions were so easy to read on her face. She must try harder, if she's going to convince everyone she has things under control, for this next month.

"I'm not very sad." She says, and it might be a lie. "I'm just worried about Bellamy."

Madi frowns. "Bellamy is your partner, yes? The one that bed is for." She says, pointing.

Clarke hesitates. She wasn't expecting to have such an emotional conversation with Madi right now. So far they have kept to lighter topics and to logistics, more or less – whether the girl is hungry or thirsty, for example. Clarke trusts herself to keep a child fed and warm and dry, more or less. But she's not sure she trusts herself with conversations about who she counts as family, and not when Madi has so recently lost her own people.

"It's complicated." She says, in the end. She used to hate that answer from adults when she was a child, she recalls unhelpfully.

"Why isn't he here?" Madi asks, suddenly tearful. "If you love each other, why isn't he here with you now?"

Clarke considers her answer for a long moment. She gathers that they are no longer talking only about Bellamy.

"We do care about each other a lot, even though he's not here. He would really want to be here, but he had to go look for his sister. He felt that he had a duty to be with her." She takes a deep breath, gathers her courage. "It's kind of like your parents. They must have loved you a lot, but they thought they couldn't come here with you. Their faith was too important to them. And it's like that for Bellamy – he thinks he's not allowed to be here as long as his sister needs his help."

Madi nods, weeping softly. Clarke thinks that's probably a good thing in some ways – they've managed to have an open and meaningful conversation about what's happened, for the first time ever.

Clarke steels herself again. She can do this. She can help this child heal, as well as keep her fed.

"I've been wondering, Madi. Why aren't you a novitiate?" After all, she must be a natural born nightblood.

"My mother and father would always hide me from the flamekeepers." She says, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.

Clarke starts a little. She doesn't know what she was expecting, really. If she'd put any real thought into the matter she should have been able to reach that logical conclusion, but in her defence she's been rather preoccupied of late.

Madi's story seems even more tragic now, she decides. To think that the girl's parents hid her and protected her for years, only to leave her to face Polis and Praimfaya and the rest of her life alone because they couldn't bring themselves to accept synthetic nightblood. She can well imagine the conflict between faith and love and duty that they must have been living for all the days of Madi's life.

She can well imagine the mixture of hope and horror with which they must have sent her away to safety here.

"It must have been really hard for them to say goodbye to you." Clarke offers quietly.

"It was. They cried a lot." Madi offers with childish simplicity.

"It's OK if you have to cry too." Clarke tells her. "Really. It's normal to cry when you lose people you love. I lost my dad not so long ago." She swallows. "And if you want to talk to me about it I can try to help."

Madi looks at her, considering. "You lost him? You mean he died?"

Clarke nods with difficulty.

Madi hugs her, small arms coming up around Clarke's waist, burrowing into her embrace. It's nice, Clarke decides, in a way she hadn't anticipated. It makes her feel needed and valued and like there's someone important in her life who's still breathing.

…...

Bellamy is trying not to freak out.

He's trying to do things sensibly, and efficiently, and in a logical order. That's what Clarke would tell him to do if she were here, and he's going to need every bit of her sense and strength, every clue that she's with him in spirit, if he's going to make it through this death wave.

He drives to the bunker quickly, but not so quickly that he is in any danger of having an accident. He opens the door, checks the place out briskly. Yes, this will do. Fortunately that grounder's body was removed and the place cleaned somewhat after Mount Weather. At the time Bellamy thought it wasn't Kane's most logical order, that he was trying to clean up messes that had stained too deeply to be forgotten. But now he's glad of the safe haven.

There's not much here besides a couple of lanterns and the odd item of stationery, but at least it's a sealed hole in the ground which should stop them from burning to death.

He carries Octavia from the rover to the bunker, and then all their supplies. Again, he tries to do it quickly, but not so quickly he runs the risk of hurting himself or breaking anything. On impulse, he takes the radio with him, too. He seems to remember that the radio was always expected to fail when the radiation levels rose, but he supposes he might as well have something to fiddle with during his month trapped underground with the sister who sometimes hates him.

By his calculations, he still has almost an hour before the death wave hits. He's starting to feel pretty ill himself, now, despite the nightblood. But he knows that's normal, and that his symptoms should improve again once his blood has started processing the radiation.

He makes a choice. He hops into the rover, drives it back through the trees. He recalls that there was a cave not so far away, and he figures it's a good idea to leave the rover there. That way, he hopes, there is some chance of it still being functional after the death wave. He might be able to jump straight in it and drive directly to Polis the moment the flames die down.

Clarke would be proud of him for thinking of that, he's pretty sure.

Sure enough, he finds a shallow cave and stashes the rover inside. He hopes it will offer some protection, at least. And then he leaves it there, jogs briskly back towards his new home.

He only has to stop and vomit once.

And it's only a little bit of vomit, anyway. It's black and sticky, which is somewhat concerning, but he hasn't the time to be concerned. He'll be fine. The nightblood will work. Clarke promised it would, and he trusts Clarke.

He wonders whether it will be like this for the whole time he's stranded here. He wonders if he will spend every minute of every day thinking of Clarke, what she's doing now, what she'd say if she were here. He wonders how on Earth he ever functioned, before he had the thought of her to keep his spirits up.

He wonders how she's coping without him, now. He wonders how much of his love confession she heard before the line went dead.

He wonders whether she'd say the words back to him, if she could.

He arrives back to the bunker, shuts the door tight behind him. He ought to breathe a sigh of relief, he supposes – he's now safe in here, and his sister is safe too. She hasn't woken up yet since he gave her the serum, but she doesn't seem to have got worse. Her pulse is holding steady.

But he doesn't breathe a sigh of relief. How can he, when he's staring a month of misery in the face?

He gets on with practical things. He unrolls the blankets Clarke gave him, makes up a bed for himself and one for Octavia using the rather thin mattresses the original owners of the bunker left behind. He lifts his sister and places her in her bed, and is relieved to find she fidgets lightly in his arms.

He sorts out their food and water stores, next. He puts all their supplies away neatly, checks and rechecks how many rations they are allocated for each day. He even finds a bucket for them to use as a makeshift toilet. He's not looking forward to having to store their waste for the whole month – he supposes the empty water barrels will have to be repurposed. It sounds gross, but it doesn't strike him as being the most wretched thing about this whole experience.

At last, he runs out of things to do. He supposes he could learn how to draw, or else make a radio call to no one. He could check Octavia's pulse again, or he could -

The death wave hits all at once. He can actually _feel_ it – the sudden jump in temperature, the force of it shaking the walls despite the yards of earth that protect them. He can hear it, too, roaring and crashing around above them like some furious one-eyed giant out of Octavia's bedtime stories.

It's not too hot. It's maybe more warm than he'd like, and he supposes the temperature will only keep rising. But they'll be OK. They have to be OK.

Clarke needs him to be OK.

He shakes his head. He can't worry about that. He ought to find something to distract him. He could set up a few more lanterns – that would make it feel marginally more like home.

He never does get as far as the lanterns. He makes it as far as the bucket, vomits up more sticky black blood.

But at least this time the sudden noise makes Octavia groan loudly and roll over in her bed, so he supposes that's progress. He just wishes it didn't leave such a bitter taste in his mouth.

…...

The first couple of days are grim, but Madi gets Clarke through it.

Maybe that's not terribly healthy, Clarke wonders. Maybe it's not ideal that she's battling on largely because she's needed, and more specifically because she's needed by a young girl who is desperately mourning her parents and her people. Maybe it would be better to keep breathing through hope or love or joy.

Yeah. That's a naive dream.

She wonders, sometimes, whether this is how Bellamy feels about Octavia. That it is necessary to get up every morning, whether she's ready or not, because there is a human being who depends on her. Sometimes, in her lower moments, she even wonders whether this is how he feels about _her_ – this pressing kind of protective obligation.

No. That can't be right. He was on the verge of saying something about love when the radio cut out. She would stake her life on it.

In a funny kind of way, she supposes that staking her life on it is more or less what she's doing. His interrupted confession is what's keeping her going, the one bright spot that's lighting the way ahead. That and the hope that she'll see Bellamy again, that they'll have a future together, that they will raise chickens and live at peace.

In the meantime, there is a bunker full of tension and sadness and even horror.

"Clarke?" Right on cue, Indra sticks her head around the door. "We need you in the atrium. Delphi and Blue Cliff are at each other's throats again."

The first time Indra used that phrase, Clarke thought she was joking, or exaggerating, or using it metaphorically. But now she understands that Indra is serious – this really is a situation with swords drawn and violence on the edge of breaking out.

She glances at Madi. The girl is sound asleep. It's late evening, and most of her roommates are resting quietly.

"Madi's safe with me." Jackson promises quietly, firmly. He's been a very reassuring presence, since they locked the door.

"I'll come with you." Miller volunteers, jumping to his feet, heading towards the door where Indra waits.

Well, then. It seems like it has been decided. A peacekeeping force of three, to defuse the tension between two whole clans.

The three of them run to the atrium. There isn't a moment to waste. They clatter down the hallways, breath ragged, hearts racing. Clarke wonders if she will ever stop feeling afraid. Even more than that, she wonders whether she will ever stop having to pretend she isn't afraid – it's exhausting, putting a brave face on things all the time. She thinks that might be what she misses the most about Bellamy, actually. That at least when she's alone with him she can take a moment to be simply herself, and not the leader of her people.

Sure enough, on arrival they find that swords are drawn and angry words are being exchanged. It's not clear what the disagreement is about – Clarke's Trig is pretty fluent, but it sounds like the Delphi and Blue Cliff warriors are shouting for the sake of shouting, more than conveying any actual content.

Indra strides right into the middle of things, Clarke and Miller hastening to follow.

"Silence!" Indra yells, in firm Trig. "Be quiet and stop your bickering."

A restless sort of quiet falls. And then Indra turns to Clarke.

Right. Yes. That's how this works. Indra and Miller are here to look forceful, wave weapons around if necessary, and shout for quiet.

Clarke is here to turn quietness into peace.

"Can I speak to one person from each clan? I'd like to know what happened here." She says mildly.

More restless quiet. One burly Delphi clan warrior steps up. One much smaller woman from Blue Cliff, with a sharp light to her eyes.

Clarke allows herself to become slightly optimistic.

"What's the problem?" She asks.

"They stole our blankets." The Blue Cliff woman spits out immediately.

"They stole our _beds_." The Delphi man counters.

Clarke sighs. "Everything is in short supply here. Indra and her team did a great job of allocating the supplies as fairly as possible."

She pauses to allow the warriors to agree that Indra has been incredible. They do not choose to do so.

She continues smoothly. "Let's count your supplies out again and check you have the right amount. I know it's tight, but it's only for a month. And then we will have our freedom back on the ground."

"Freedom?" Spits the Delphi man. "Some _freedom_. What will be left? The world is burning. We will argue about the same blankets up on the ground."

Aha. So it seems this is the real issue. This is nothing to do with blankets or beds, not really. This is violence born out of fear of the unknown, lack of hope for a brighter future. This is fighting because these people know how to fight better than they know how they will live in a nuclear wasteland in one month's time.

"We don't know what will be left." Clarke admits carefully. "But we have our best people on it. The agriculture team in Arkadia have a plan for fertilising the wastelands. We will have plenty to eat. And yes, you're right, it might take a while to build our homes or make new blankets. But we'll be safe and well, and that's the most important thing of all."

She pauses a second, lets them take in her words. It's moments like this where she wishes Bellamy was by her side. He used to do a good line in inspirational speeches, she seems to remember, back when they first landed.

There are a couple of nods. Good. She presses her advantage.

"In the meantime, try to look for the good. This is an opportunity to make peace with your new neighbours. Honour the wishes of Lexa kom Trikru, the last true commander. She called for peace not war." Clarke swallows down the tears that threaten to rise in her throat. "Seek common ground. I've invited the Broad Leaf people to come to Arkadia and learn more about our religion when all this is over. Do your people have things in common like that, too?"

There are a couple more nods, but a number of sceptical expressions remain. Clarke takes a deep breath. What is left to say? What on Earth can she try now?

Then Miller saves the day.

"It's like me and Indra." He says, cheerful, with that friendly, open expression he wears so well. "We were on different sides at first, weren't we? But now we stand together." He slaps her heartily on the back to punctuate his point.

Indra stands there and takes it, wearing a half smile. Clarke almost grins in spite of herself – she and Miller will both owe Indra a favour, she thinks, for taking this brotherly back-slapping in good humour now.

That wins it for them. That has more people nodding – they respect Indra. It has the Blue Cliff woman sheathing her sword, reaching out a hand towards the Delphi clan representative.

He clasps her hand, shakes it cautiously.

And finally, Clarke allows herself to relax somewhat.

The peacekeeping trio hang around a little longer. They mustn't leave before they know that the crisis really has died away. They wait for the Blue Cliff warriors to wander out of the atrium, with many promises to return the items they _accidentally borrowed_. Delfikru head out through the other exit, muttering something about _no hard feelings_.

It's late by the time Clarke heads back to her room. She thinks that's a good thing – there's some hope of her being exhausted enough to fall asleep rather than lying awake all night and dwelling on her worries.

Madi is sound asleep when Clarke arrives. Jackson is half awake, watching over the child, and gives Clarke a sleepy nod when she appears, before turning to greet Miller with rather more enthusiasm.

Huh. It looks like she was right. It looks like there might be something going on there, and she is happy for them.

She's sad for herself, though. It brings her loneliness into even sharper focus. She prepares for bed swiftly, then settles onto her pallet. She tries to ignore the sounds of a couple of dozen friends and strangers shuffling restlessly in the darkness. She tries to ignore their breathing, snoring, and occasional muffled weeping.

She tries to ignore the way that all these damn people make her feel even more lonely.

She fidgets a little, unable to get comfortable. She forces herself to take long, slow breaths, but it doesn't really help. She counts on her fingers the things she has done today, the things she has yet to do tomorrow.

None of it helps.

She reaches for her backpack, eases the precious radio out of its safe hiding space. She knows there is no point speaking into the radio, because she knows it has cut out. She knows Bellamy can't hear her. But she just needs to do it, OK? She just needs to wish him goodnight. It's a part of her daily routine, a ritual that keeps her sane, and it's been torn away from her now Bellamy's stranded outside.

"Sleep well." She whispers into the silent radio. "And – may we meet again."

She sleeps after that. She doesn't sleep _soundly_ , not really. But at least she sleeps.

…...

Bellamy supposes he ought to use this time to catch up on some sleep. He's had precious little of it in recent weeks, after all, and he's still feeling pretty groggy from the radiation. So this should be a great opportunity – he's trapped in a small bunker with absolutely nothing to do except care for his sister. And even that is hardly demanding much of his time – she's still sleeping, for the most part, occasionally blinking her eyes open drowsily and accepting a sip or two of water.

He hasn't caught up on much sleep, though. He's too anxious to sleep.

For the most part he has been playing with his radio. He knows that's stupid, that Clarke can't hear a word he says. But it's like a comfort blanket, or a familiar snippet of routine, that makes him feel grounded and like he has some connection to the world outside this hole in the ground.

Sometimes he even admits defeat and has a fully-fledged one-sided conversation.

"Hey, Clarke." He whispers now. "I know this is dumb, OK? You're going to tease me so badly when I tell you about this. But I haven't got anyone else to talk to, have I? O's still asleep, pretty much. I think she's doing a little better today though. Her pulse feels stronger and she's breathing more evenly. That has to be good, right?"

Clarke doesn't reply of course. She never does.

He's just gathering his thoughts to keep speaking when a different voice catches him by surprise.

"Big brother?" That's Octavia, and she sounds incredulous.

He spins around, and sees her lying on her bed. That's where she's been for the last three days since they locked the door. But this feels different, somehow. She looks more alert and interested as she blinks up at him.

He sets down the radio and dashes to her side.

"Hey, O. How are you feeling? Can I get you some water?"

She frowns, hard. "You got me water before. When I was really sick – it's a bit hazy."

"Yeah. Yeah, you were really sick."

"And you've been taking care of me?"

He nods. He doesn't see why she sounds so surprised. He hands her a drink of water, and it seems she is strong enough to reach out and take it.

"Where are we?" She croaks, then raises the water to her lips and takes a sip.

"In a small bunker on Trikru land. Finn found it, back when we first landed."

"How did we get here?" She asks, eyes narrowing. "Did you – you found me? You came looking for me?"

He nods. Obviously he did.

Octavia doesn't seem to think it's so obvious. "After everything, you came looking for me? After I beat you and hurt you? In the middle of an apocalypse you came looking for me?"

"Of course I did." He swallows. "You're my sister."

She starts weeping, then. She starts gulping out noisy sobs, tears streaking down her cheeks. He's a little surprised by that – he doesn't mind admitting it. He thought he was in for a month of animosity or even outright anger and violence. He never expected Octavia to lie here _crying_.

"O?" He reaches out tentatively towards her, concerned, but not sure whether she wants any hug of his. "O? Are you -"

She throws herself at him, but not to hurt, this time. Rather there is something very healing about the way she pulls him tightly into a hug, rests her head on his shoulder as she weeps into his shirt.

"I'm sorry." She gasps as she sobs. "I'm so sorry, Bellamy. I can't believe you would do that."

He's a little hurt by that comment. He pulls gently away, looks somewhere off to the left. "Of course I did that. It's what I do. I – I take care of my family."

She sees right through him. Of course she does. She's known him almost his whole life. She leans back towards him, clasps a hand around his forearm.

"But you wish you didn't have to." She concludes softly. "You wish that for once in your life you could do what _you_ want, rather than running around after me. I knew that, and I made you do it anyway. And I'm sorry for that."

He looks at her sharply. He wasn't expecting her to address the topic so baldly. That's not what they do, in his experience – they tread more tentatively around the things that actually matter.

"I was in a bad place." She continues. "I know that's no excuse. But I – I lost Lincoln. I didn't know how to handle it. And when I got sick I knew it was the radiation." She swallows noisily. "I thought I was going to die. I had a long time to think, while I was getting sicker. About how I'd hurt you, and about how knowing you, you'd spend the rest of your life blaming yourself."

"I would have done." He admits easily – not because it's a comfortable idea, but because it's the truth.

She shakes her head fiercely. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Bellamy. You deserve better than that."

He snorts. He's pretty sure that's not true, really. He picks at a loose thread on the leg of his trousers, then forces himself to leave it. He'll be wearing these for the next month, after all. He casts around his thoughts for a new topic of conversation, but none presents itself.

No. There are some far more dangerous words threatening to fall out of his mouth.

He tries to hold them in. Really he does. But in the end it's a lost cause.

"I just wish I was enough to make you stay." He chokes out, and finds that he is crying himself, now. "I wish I was enough to make you stay in Arkadia. I wish I was enough to make Clarke stay after Mount Weather. I just wish -"

"That's not on you." Octavia informs him harshly. He gets the impression she'd be brandishing a sword to make her point, if she happened to have a sword to hand. "That's on _me_ , big brother. I didn't run because I didn't love you. I ran because I didn't love _myself_."

He frowns. He supposes that could make sense. But it's such a challenge to his lifelong worldview that he doesn't know how to process it.

Octavia keeps speaking. "I can't speak for Clarke. But I guess I always thought it was similar for her. She's always running away from her demons, and duty calls her away a lot. She was leaving Lexa to go back to Arkadia when the blockade came in, you know."

He blinks, startled. He didn't know that, actually. In his mind, there was always something significant about the way she would leave him but stayed with Lexa. But this could change things.

Again, Octavia ploughs on. "Have you tried talking to her about it?"

"We've been talking a lot these last few weeks. But not – not about that. Not about... what we are."

Octavia snorts. It's not a very amused sound – they've both been crying too much for genuine humour. But it's an acknowledgement that his words could be funny, were they not weeping in a humid hole in the ground.

"You're both idiots, is what you are. Maybe that's how I should pay you back for coming to find me. Maybe that's how I can show you you're allowed to worry about yourself instead of me, now. Yeah, that's a plan – when we get out of here I'm going to lock you and Clarke in a room together to talk about how you feel."

This time, it is his turn to snort. He has to admit she's got a point. If there's one thing he's learnt, in the last five surprising minutes, is that locking two people in a confined space together is a very effective way of forcing them to talk about their relationship – both the wonderful parts and the deeply dysfunctional.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so grateful to all the folks who have been so encouraging about this story, and Stormkpr most of all. Please enjoy some angst and fluff and reunions! Happy reading!

The month that follows is one of the worst months of Clarke's life. And that's impressive, really, because her shortlist of horrific seasons is already far too long.

There is at once too much to do, and not enough to do. There's too much that feels like work, and obligation – too many disputes to settle, supplies to distribute, meetings to attend. Most of all, there is too much pressure to maintain a carefully calm expression, to give the impression that everything is under control, every minute of every day. There is absolutely no privacy in this overcrowded bunker, and she feels like she is at work and on display every single second – even when she tries to sleep at night, surrounded by friends and strangers. It reaches the point where taking a shower feels like a well-earned vacation. The queues are long, but it is worth it, for a couple of precious minutes behind a locked door where no one can see her vulnerable face as she relaxes and breathes in the reassuring scent of that shampoo.

At the same time, there is not enough to do that is enriching and relaxing and good for her soul. She hasn't had time to pick up a pencil, to start with. When she has time to sit down for a meal, she sits with the same few people every time. They are people she loves – Madi, Raven, Jackson and Miller for the most part – but they are not people she can depend on for emotional support. There are two people on her very short list of genuine support network members – Bellamy, and sometimes her mother. And neither of those people are here now.

She tries to follow her own advice of forging new friendship, reaches out to that sharp-eyed woman who leads Blue Cliff. It turns out she's called Layla, and has a fierce sense of humour and justice that makes her not unlike Raven. And so she becomes another person Clarke sometimes shares a meal with.

It's not the same, though. It's not the same as moonshine and planning and general all-round encouragement with Bellamy. And it's certainly not the same as a heartfelt radio call.

She still uses the radio, just as a bizarre coping mechanism that never works as well as she would like it to. She waits until everyone else in the dorm is either out or asleep, and then whispers unheard words to a man she hopes is still alive.

"Today sucked." She murmurs to him tonight. "I'm sorry, I know I said that yesterday. It sucks most of all because I know I can't _tell_ anyone it sucks, you know? Anyone except you, that is. I know I should be grateful we're all alive. I guess I feel kind of... guilty? For how much this is getting to me." She gives a self conscious laugh. "I really miss the dropship right now. Does that sound crazy? There was always some good company, something fun to do to take our mind off things. And less pressure – we were only trying to keep ourselves and a hundred kids alive. This is – it's big." She concludes, inadequate.

She gathers her thoughts, tries for something brighter.

"I hope you're doing OK, Bellamy. I hope the serum worked for Octavia. I'm not sure what's worse – the idea that you're alone out there, or the idea you're stuck with her and she's hurting you. I just – I just hope you're alive." She always finds herself saying that, somewhere along the line. However hard she tries to reassure herself that he must have made it to the bunker in time, the doubt still lingers.

She is surprised by a voice.

"Clarke?" It's Madi, stirring on the mattress that should have been Bellamy's but has become hers.

"Hey, Madi. You're OK. You can go back to sleep."

Madi does not follow that hint. She sits up, frowns at Clarke. "Were you calling him again?"

Clarke does not pretend to misunderstand. "Yes. I was."

"Why do you do that? What's the point of calling him if you know he can't answer?"

"I don't do it because I think he'll answer." She explains, aware even as she speaks that it sounds a little crazy. "I do it because it's... comforting. It reminds me I'm not on my own. That he's still supporting me, even though he's not really here."

"How is he supporting you if he's not answering?" Madi asks, more confused than critical.

"I guess it's about reminding myself that he exists. That he's still out there. That there's someone in the world who sees me as a person he wants to have a chat on the radio with, rather than the leader of the human race. And remembering all the good conversations we've had, all the times we've supported each other. It's about holding onto those good moments and reminding myself there are more of them to come."

Madi nods, thoughtful. Silence falls for a moment.

And then the child speaks. "I still think I hear my _nomon_ sometimes, even though I know she's – she's gone. Is that – am I crazy, Clarke?"

Clarke hugs her tight. "Not at all. It's normal to do that a bit, when you're grieving. Or when you're missing someone, whether they're alive or dead."

"It's kind of like you're doing with Bellamy." Madi offers. Clarke nods, keen to encourage the child to keep working on processing her feelings.

But there's one bit of this conversation she's much less keen on. It's got her wondering once more whether Bellamy is still breathing.

…...

Bellamy knows he ought to be grateful he's still alive, but he's really struggling for gratitude right now, if he's being honest.

For starters, he feels absolutely disgusting. He's been wearing the same clothes since he left Arkadia, and hasn't been able to wash them or himself since the death wave hit. He hasn't been able to shave or trim his hair, either, so he's pretty sure he looks and smells like a yeti by now. Is a yeti the right word? He's not quite sure. He seems to remember they were hairy and used to exist in stories on Earth before the bombs.

He feels rather fidgety, too. It's been over three weeks since they locked the door, and he's sick and tired of this tiny space, and of not knowing what's going on in the world outside. He knows the death wave is burning less fiercely, if it's burning at all. He hasn't heard any loud noises or felt any surges of heat for a few days, now. But he knows it won't be safe to open the door until the month has passed that Raven calculated.

In the meantime, he tries to keep himself busy. He does workouts he remembers from his time on the guard, sets of exercises suitable for the tiny space. They give him something to do, and he likes to know he's keeping fit, but they make the personal hygiene situation even worse.

Octavia joins him, though. That's a good thing. Enthusiasm for physical fitness and enjoyment of combat training feel like the only things they genuinely have in common, these days. At least their relationship seems to be better right now than it has been at any other point since they came to the ground. But maybe that's not saying much.

"Stop pacing, Bellamy." As if on cue, Octavia snaps at him loudly.

Then she realises what she's done, and softens, a guilty look on her face.

"I just mean – if you're bored, let's train. That could be fun, right?"

He resists the urge to point out that it stopped being strictly _fun_ after about the eighth day, and instead became simply habit. He resists the urge to snap straight back at her, too. He's rather sick of this dynamic they have going, where she screws up or lashes out but then apologises or hates herself or both.

He'd rather she didn't screw up in the first place.

He knows that's uncharitable. He knows she's struggling with guilt and grief and her emotions are still out of kilter. He gets that, and he's trying to be compassionate. But it's tough, being locked under the ground here with an obligation, while the woman he'd be with by choice is a day's drive away, probably worrying that he's dead.

As if reading his thoughts, Octavia tries again.

"I'm sorry, Bell. Really. How about we try to play a game? Or we could tell stories. You used to love telling me stories when I was a kid."

He snorts. She's no child any more. She's a frankly terrifying young adult. And it's not like telling some ancient myth is going to turn back the clock.

"You could tell me a different story." She suggests, voice softer. "Tell me about some of the things I missed by running away? Tell me how our friends are doing. Tell me a happy story about all these radio calls you and Clarke have started sharing."

He shakes his head. "I can't do that. I can't face it." He admits, voice raw with honesty. "I'm going crazy, cooped up in here and worrying about her."

Octavia isn't surprised by that confession. They've been doing a lot better at openness and communication, these last three weeks.

She frowns, starts speaking quietly. "She wouldn't want that for you, I'm pretty sure. I know you're a worrier, big brother. You always have been, and I guess that's my fault – or Mum's. But you're more than just her bodyguard."

 _You are more than your sister's keeper._ Isn't that kind of what Clarke was trying to tell him, that day? That she sees him as having meaning in his own right, beyond his role protecting others?

"Yeah. I know. I can't wait to just get a drink with her and tell her all about this month." He says, running a hand through his too-long hair.

Octavia laughs. "Sounds like a great first date. _Hey, let me tell you about a month I spent doing workouts with my sister and sleeping three yards from the bathroom bucket_."

That has him laughing, too. He never thought he'd see the day when he and Octavia could laugh openly together once again, but this month has sort of forced them to that point, and he's strangely grateful for it.

A few seconds pass. The laughter falls away. Bellamy gathers his courage, says something he knows is long overdue.

"It wasn't your fault, you know. Or Mum's. It was the Ark's fault, for forcing us into a situation where we had to hide you, where our lives had to revolve around you. For making it so that the best a Factory Station boy could hope for was becoming a guard and protecting people for a living, too. The Ark has been trying to teach me I have no worth outside protecting others all my life."

He pauses. He frowns at his hands. He picks some dirt out from under his fingernails, then takes a deep breath.

"Clarke was the first person to teach me different from that." He concludes, proud of himself for getting the words out.

Octavia doesn't roll her eyes, nor laugh at how stilted his attempts to talk about his emotions always are. He's glad of that – this whole ordeal does seem to have taught her a softer side.

On the contrary, she pats him lightly on the shoulder.

"Just think. Only a week and then we can get out of here. And then you can tell her that."

He smiles slightly to himself, goes back to staring at his hands. That does sound like a good plan, he has to admit.

…...

Clarke tries not to get too obviously excited, as the day that will mark a month since the death wave grows closer. She cannot afford to let on that she is struggling, that she will be relieved when all this is over. But all the same, she _is_ excited, and she can almost feel the tension ebbing away as they grow ever nearer to opening the door.

There are things to be done before then, of course. She goes to plenty of meetings about their exit strategy, wonders how Monty and the agriculture team are getting on with their fertiliser project in Arkadia. She has no way of asking them, of course – she will just have to hope the rover Miller drove here in is working when they open the door, so that they will be able to go to Arkadia to ask for an update in person.

She has the everyday things to deal with, too. Things like feeding Madi, and helping out in med bay, and occasionally walking into Jackson and Miller making out in a storage closet. She's happy that they've got together, of course. It seems to have been heading that way for a few weeks, now.

But she's fiercely jealous. She can't help wondering whether Bellamy would be making out with her in a storage closet, if he were here now.

No. That's not a useful or productive train of thought. She refocuses on her footsteps, notes that she has nearly arrived at engineering. Good. She's here to speak to Raven.

She knocks at the door, hears Raven call out in welcome. She pastes her leadership face carefully on, because she doesn't want even Raven to see how she's struggling to cope with the exhaustion and anxiety of living like this. And then she opens the door.

"Hey, Raven."

"Clarke. How's it going?"

Clarke just nods. That's more or less an answer, right? "How did you get on with that modelling?" She asks Raven.

The modelling in question is a project to predict how the landscape will look after Praimfaya. Clarke doesn't entirely understand it, but she gathers that Raven has put some data into a computer – things to do with the terrain and the locations of the various nuclear reactors – and that this will supposedly work through some scenarios to tell them just how thoroughly screwed they will be in their search for farmland when they return to the surface.

"I got on very well." Raven says, but she doesn't sound happy about it.

"What do you mean? What's the answer?"

"I got on well – the project went really smoothly. But the answer's not great. You want the good news or the bad news first?"

"The bad news." Clarke answers, automatically. Life on Earth has made her that kind of person.

"There will be no useful farmland round here at all. Polis will be in the middle of a desert."

Clarke sucks in a breath, tries not to panic. "But you said there was good news?"

"Yeah. According to the projections, the whole of Shallow Valley should have survived intact. Which is mad – the whole valley? - but it's definitely true. I ran it a couple more times to check."

Clarke can't decide whether to rejoice or despair. Shallow Valley is a good-sized piece of land, from what she's heard since she found herself on speaking terms with so many grounders. The remains of the human race could certainly survive there, with careful rationing and allocation of land, at least until the agriculture team have fertilised more of the desert.

But it's miles away, across the wasteland.

"So Madi will be able to go home." Clarke says, because that seems like a place to start. Madi is rarely far from her thoughts, these days.

"Yeah." Raven nods, smiling. "Could be worse, huh? We'll be OK. When we open the door, we can send a couple of people out in the rover to check that the projection is right. And then if all goes to plan, I guess we just have a long walk ahead of us."

Clarke frowns at her, dubious. She's all for Raven being a proud and ambitious person, but she doesn't think that walking the whole way to Shallow Valley in a leg brace is a terribly practical idea.

"Or we could do shuttles with the rover, drive people there in groups." Clarke suggests instead.

Raven snorts. "Clarke. There are thousands of people in this bunker, and hundreds more in Arkadia and the Azgeda bunker. That could be months or even years of rover trips."

"We've got more than one rover. There are others at Arkadia, and the truck."

She's spoken too soon. The rovers are purely theoretical, until they open the door and check that they are still working. This whole entire plan is purely theoretical, until they are actually outside and able to see the world left behind by the death wave for themselves.

She learns this, all too abruptly, one week later. She learns this when she tries to open the door, and finds that it will not budge an inch.

…...

Bellamy is up bright and early, the day that marks a month since the death wave hit.

OK, that's not quite true. He barely sleeps that night, too excited and restless to switch his brain off. So he lies there on his pallet, planning out every conversation and confession he wants to share with Clarke, every joke he wants to make with Miller, the hearty handshake – or perhaps familial hug – he hopes to exchange with Kane. And when it is more or less morning, but still early, he gets up, and packs up his bedding, and sits to wait for his sister to stir.

He tries to keep busy, knows that being idle this morning will only drive him further into nervousness. He packs his meagre belongings into his backpack, and scavenges a couple of other bits and pieces that look useful, too. He takes every pencil he can find in the bunker, for example. He figures Clarke could use a cheerful gift at a time like this. She seemed to like the shampoo, from what she said during their radio calls.

At last, Octavia rolls over and blinks up at him.

"Time to go?" She asks simply.

He nods.

They are out of there less than ten minutes later. Bellamy isn't even surprised by that – he knows they are both keen to leave that cramped bunker behind forever.

But then he reaches the surface, and sucks in a startled breath. This doesn't look like the planet Earth he remembers. He knew it wouldn't, of course. He was expecting wasteland of some sort or another. But this feels more extreme than wasteland, somehow. This is more like desert, with scorched earth and trees of crumbling charcoal.

"Better hope none of those fall and crush us." He says, as lightly as he can, with a nod at a nearby tree trunk. He has always made jokes to handle difficult situations in the past, but he finds it doesn't work quite so well, now. There's something about the idea that these unrecognisable structures used to be _trees_ that is really troubling him.

Octavia doesn't even blink. She's difficult to startle, these days.

"Lead the way to the rover." She says simply.

He does. He hopes to high heaven it has survived, but his optimism is fading fast as he takes in the landscape around him. Could a fragile bundle of electronics, a complicated and precise engine, really have survived a disaster like this?

He wonders about asking Octavia, but it seems wrong to break the tense silence between them, somehow.

It's odd, navigating through this changed landscape. The shape of the terrain has more or less survived, and the layout of the charcoal tree trunks goes some way to reminding him of the old forest. He thinks he's going the right way.

He prays he's going the right way.

He _is_ going the right way. For the first time in as long as he can remember, he gets a lucky break. He sees the cave ahead, and feels his hopes rise ever so slightly. The structure of the cave looks unchanged.

"I left it in there." He breathes, gesturing forwards.

"Smart move, Bell. Let's go see."

Octavia runs ahead. He's not sure whether that's childlike enthusiasm returned to her, or just eagerness to be running after all that time cooped up. Or maybe it's even worse – maybe it's the anxiety of the morning, boiling over as frantic movement.

He follows more slowly. Now that he's here, he almost doesn't want to know. There's a tiny part of him that would rather be in that bunker, still, worrying about what was yet to come. There's a bliss that comes with ignorance, he thinks. Now he's on the point of finding out whether or not they have transport, he can't bear to hear bad news.

"Looking good!" Octavia's excited voice calls from the cave. "Come on in! It looks OK."

He does break into a run, now. If Octavia is sounding so positive, surely that has to be a good sign?

He almost crumples in relief when he gets into the cave and sees the rover. She was right – it does look good. It's maybe a little more scratched than he remembers, but the structure still looks perfectly sound. There's no sign of substantial damage at all.

But that doesn't mean the engine is still working, he reminds himself. He has very little idea how this thing works, whether it depends on some fiddly parts that are particularly vulnerable to heat.

There's no point standing around and procrastinating. He knows this, but still he struggles to move forward. He takes a deep breath, forces himself to climb into the driver's seat and try starting the engine.

Nothing.

He takes another deep breath, tries again.

Nothing.

"Bell?" Octavia's voice has the slightest shake of fear.

It's a silly thing, he thinks. She's killed countless warriors. He followed her to Earth without looking back. They ought to be brave – in fact, he's pretty convinced they _are_ brave. But right now they're both trembling because a damn rover won't start.

He just doesn't know what they'll do if they can't get the rover to start.

He tries again, prays hard, turns the ignition.

Again, he is met by silence.

"What about the battery?" Octavia asks quietly. "Was the battery charged when you left it here?"

"Of course it was." He snaps. "It was early evening, I'd been driving in the light all day. Of course the battery was charged."

"Could it go flat while it was parked up here? I don't know how these things work. Could the battery have drained?"

He shrugs. He has no clue at all. It's a tempting idea, but he thinks it might be tempting because they're desperate, rather than because there is any actual sense to it. He supposes he's never seen anyone leave a rover parked in the darkness for a month, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

"What are you suggesting?" He asks her mildly. It takes him a great deal of effort to phrase it like that, rather than yelling a demand to know what the hell they should do now. Clarke would be proud of him, he thinks in passing.

Clarke _will_ be proud of him, if only he can start this damn rover and ever see her again.

"We push it out into the sun." Octavia suggests, as if it's the simplest thing in the world.

Bellamy doesn't hesitate. It's worth a try, even if he thinks it's a crazy scheme. What have they got to lose? If they're going to trek through the wasteland with barely any rations left, and most likely die along the way, he figures they may as well spend a couple of hours uselessly charging a knackered rover, first.

The two of them get behind the rover and start pushing. It's a good job they've been keeping fit this month, Bellamy thinks. He wonders about saying that, but decides against it. That's another example of him being flippant under pressure, and he's not sure it would help. Now he comes to think about it, he's pretty sure Clarke is the only person who ever did appreciate him taking the piss when things get desperate.

The rover inches slowly forward. It's heavy work, and most likely pointless. Bellamy keeps telling himself that, carefully and often. He cannot afford to get his hopes up.

At last, the rover is out in the light. Bellamy stands back, wipes his sweaty palms off on his disgusting shirt.

"I guess we have a couple of hours to kill." He says lightly.

"Yeah. Any ideas?"

"Do you think there's still that river over that way?" He asks, pointing north a little to where he remembers a river in days gone by. "I'd like to wash before we get there. I feel pretty gross."

Octavia gives a hollow laugh. "I'm pretty sure there are no rivers _anywher_ _e,_ Bell. Take a look around you. Does it look like there are rivers?"

Huh. So much for trying to lighten the mood. It's like he thought – only Clarke appreciates that. So it looks like he's destined to spend the next two hours sitting here and fretting about whether the rover will start.

To his surprise, Octavia has more to say.

"She won't care. You know she won't. She'll be too desperate to hug you anyway."

"I've missed people other than Clarke." He says, defensive, but trying to buy into this slightly teasing conversation. It seems more fun than sitting around and staring at his own shoes while they wait, after all.

"But she's the one you want to hug." Octavia accuses him, grinning. "And kiss. But maybe wait until you've washed before you go any further than that."

He laughs. Not because it's the funniest thing in the world, not by a long shot. But because it's funnier than dying of dehydration while they sit by a rover in the desert, and funnier than Octavia beating his face to a pulp, too. It is, in short, a funnier conversation than he would have imagined them ever having, in these circumstances.

He only hopes there's some element of truth to Octavia's words. He only hopes Clarke will greet him with a hug, and that things will go back to normal. He hopes it won't be like the last time they were separated, when she left after Mount Weather and everything went so wrong between them. It shouldn't be like that, he hopes, because this time, they split up more or less on good terms.

Apart from the fact she was angry with him for not coming home.

It'll be fine. They'll be OK. They'll hug, and maybe even kiss, and work it out.

They'll hug, just as long as he can get this damn rover started.

…...

He lasts a whole hour, in the end. He chats lightly with Octavia about nothing, tries the radio a couple of times with no success. He's not surprised about that – he knew the radiation would still be blocking the signal, because that was Raven's prediction. But all the same, trying a call or two helps pass the time.

When that first hour is up, he gives up and strides to the driver's seat.

"Bell?" Octavia asks, unsure.

"Figure I might as well try now. How long does it even take to charge a completely flat battery far enough to start the engine?"

She shrugs. Exactly. Neither of them knows. He's been taught how to drive, but he's no mechanic. And Octavia has barely ever even ridden in one of these things.

The rover starts first time. After all the failed attempts, the sweaty pushing, the hour sitting and fretting in the sun, it is as easy as that.

He gives a slightly hysterical laugh. Octavia jumps into the front passenger seat with the kind of energy and enthusiasm he hasn't seen from her in quite some time. He shakes his head, still laughing, and starts driving in the direction of Polis.

There are no roads. But there's nothing much in his way, either. There are only the crumbling charcoal tree trunks and the occasional boulder. So he simply takes a direct course towards where he knows Polis ought to be.

The two of them chat a bit as they go. Now that they are confined in a moving rover rather than a stinking bunker, the atmosphere between them is even lighter. Octavia talks about how she looks forward to seeing Indra again, and Monty and Harper and Jasper when they are all together again. It occurs to Bellamy that he's maybe been a bit selfish in insisting that they go straight to Polis, rather than Arkadia. But in his defence, they're actually on the list for Polis. It's not as if he's only going there to see Clarke.

At last, the Polis tower appears on the horizon. Thank goodness – they must be going the right way. He picks up even more speed, trusts that the way ahead will remain open and flat and clear.

Polis is a mess, they realise on arrival. The buildings are sort of half-standing, with roofs or windows ripped off by the force of the death wave. A few of the more flimsy ones have even tumbled to the ground, and the streets are littered with debris.

"We should leave the rover and go on foot." He suggests, when they're close, and when he's ready to admit that he cannot really drive any further through this chaos.

Octavia nods, eyes wide, as she gazes out at the scene before them.

They each grab their precious few personal belongings and start walking. Bellamy supposes it's a little foolish that he's carrying three pencils and a non-functioning radio through the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, and yet it's hardly the most foolish thing he's ever done. He walks briskly, urgently. He needs to get to the bunker, needs to check that everyone inside is OK.

He needs to hug Clarke.

He wonders for a moment why they haven't seen anyone yet. If they're all alive, and they know this is the day to open the doors, where are they? Surely everyone must be eager to get out. Does that mean something has gone wrong? Does that mean -?

"Slow down, Bell." Octavia places a hand on his arm. "You don't want to fall. Look, the temple's right there. It's still standing. So they must be OK."

He doesn't necessarily follow that logic. Things could go wrong other than the temple collapsing, he fears. But all the same, she's right. He doesn't want to fall. He's already sweaty and filthy – he doesn't want to be sweaty, filthy, and bleeding to boot.

Within seconds, he is striding into the temple, taking in the scene before him. A large column of stone seems to have fallen across the bunker door. That's unfortunate, he decides, and yet encouraging at the same time. That must be why they've not seen anyone. They're simply trapped by one block of stone. He can deal with that.

Without stopping to think too hard, he grabs a nearby piece of metal that looks sturdy. He thinks it's probably part of some relic of Becca Pramheda, but in this moment, he doesn't greatly care. He just needs to lever that damn rock off the door. Octavia helps him, tucking the makeshift crowbar in place, and then they're both leaning on it with all their weight.

They do it. They lift the column, shove it to one side. Good god, but this has been an exhausting day. What with pushing the rover out of the cave and now this, Bellamy figures his back will be sore tomorrow. He's used to life being tough on the ground, but all this urgent lifting after a month of measly confined workouts is not doing him any good.

"Next time we get stranded in a death wave, remind me to take a spare key." Bellamy jokes tiredly, nodding at the locked door. Yet another obstacle to worry about.

Octavia huffs a little, and stamps on the door hard with her booted foot. That's one way of knocking, he supposes.

It works. Within minutes the door is cracked open, and Miller's stunned face is looking up at them.

"You made it!" He cries, flinging the door fully open with a grunt. "My god, you made it. And you got the door clear? We figured something was blocking it."

Bellamy points at the offending column, notes idly that one of his fingernails seems to be bleeding a lot. Ah well. He's had worse wounds.

And then Miller has made it all the way up the ladder, and is hugging them both fiercely. It's a new experience, this, Bellamy muses. He's counted Miller a close friend for quite some time now. But he's not used to sharing enthusiastic group hugs with him.

"How is everyone?" Bellamy asks as he pulls away. "All OK in there?"

"It's a bit cramped, but we're doing fine. Everyone's physically OK. Clarke and Indra have been working too hard, but that's nothing new. And – uh – I guess me and Jackson are together now."

"You _guess_?" Octavia teases, eyes bright.

If Miller objects to being teased by someone he hasn't always been on good terms with, he doesn't show it. Clearly this is a day for joy.

"I guess." He repeats. "You know how it is. Do people really label things in the middle of Praimfaya?"

Bellamy snorts. Yes, that's an issue he's familiar with. No one seems to have much time to define relationships when they're struggling to survive.

Miller continues speaking. "Come on in. I'm hoping you two might have some hope of convincing Clarke and Indra to slow down."

"Not likely." Bellamy hears Octavia mutter.

"We'll try." He says firmly. "I'm just happy to hear they're OK." It occurs to him, though, that Miller hasn't actually said much about whether Clarke _is_ OK. He's only said that she's physically fine, but working too hard. And now he comes to think about it, he fears that might be code for her _not_ being particularly OK after all.

He doesn't have time to think about it much. Miller leads the way down the ladder, followed by Octavia. Bellamy closes the door behind them. And then there's an inner door, forming a sort of radiation airlock. The moment the outer door is closed, almost before he has managed to jump down the ladder, the inner door is opening.

And then Clarke is flying into his arms, all bouncing blond hair and flailing limbs as she quite simply throws herself at him.

He laughs a little in stunned joy as he staggers backwards half a pace, clips his calf on the ladder. This reminds him of that first hug they shared at Camp Jaha, except that this time, he is more than ready to catch her. He hugs her back, hard, buries his face in her neck, takes a deep breath of a scent that smells suspiciously like that shampoo he bought her. He weaves a hand into her hair and just holds her head close against his chest for several long seconds. He's honestly never enjoyed a hug more in his entire life.

"You're OK." She mutters, still hugging him.

"Yeah. You?"

She doesn't answer. He tries not to dwell on that, tries to concentrate on running his hand over her shoulders and nuzzling closer into her neck than he really ought. But then she pulls away, takes a couple of steps back, reversing awkwardly until she's standing next to a small child. And now he's looking at her, rather than holding her, he realises it.

There's something wrong with the look in her eyes.

She looks sort of cold, and distant, and he doesn't like it. She's not making eye contact like he's used to seeing from her, not going through life with that challenging gaze. She looks _calm_ , sure, but she doesn't look happy. And that's pretty damn weird, he thinks. If ever there was a time when she should look happy, he'd like to hope that this would be it. He doesn't think he's mad to believe he's special to her, and she's literally just found out he's still breathing. He'd have thought that merited a slightly more openly emotional facial expression.

He brushes that thought aside. He watches Octavia greet Indra, shakes her hand himself. He greets Raven, learns that the child at Clarke's side is a young girl named Madi whose parents died in the death wave, and who Clarke has adopted.

Huh. That's quite a big item of news, he thinks. He's not sure what to make of it, is sort of too shocked to figure out whether he's happy for Clarke that she's got herself a little family now, or disappointed to find that he might not be so uniquely close to her, any more.

No. That's silly. Her daughter is not _competition_. He should simply show Clarke he still wants to be in her life. And anyway, he likes children.

It's just a big deal, OK? It's a substantial new development, and one that he sure as hell wasn't expecting.

"Bellamy?" Clarke says his name, and he gets the feeling he's supposed to have been listening.

"Sorry. Just – a lot to take in." He says, inadequately.

Clarke has a _child_.

She doesn't visibly react. She just keeps talking, and it worries him.

"You should take a shower." She suggests. "There are spare clothes as well. Indra's in charge of supplies. She'll get you everything you need."

"I do kind of stink." He agrees, trying to laugh at himself and not entirely succeeding.

Clarke nods. Indra frowns. Silence begins to grow taught between them.

He takes a risk, steps closer to Clarke. He lowers his voice, and tries to look her right in the eyes, but she's not having any of it.

"Are you doing OK?" He mutters, aware that they have an audience, but not seeing a better solution. They had an audience of sorts on the road to TonDC, he remembers, or when she was in that rover with Roan, and yet she still managed to be honest with him on those occasions.

"I'm fine." She says, eyes on the floor, and it's obviously a lie. "You should take a shower."

He's a little hurt by that, really. They were doing so well at honest conversation over the radio, and he's disappointed to think that has all vanished during just one month apart. And he has to admit that he's offended to think she cares more about him needing a shower than him showing up here alive. He imagined rather more hugging before she started fixating on his unwashed state.

But more than anything else, he's worried about her. She's obviously not fine, and he needs to help her out. That's what they do for each other. So it is that he hunts urgently for a strategy.

"You're right, I should go have a shower. But can we find some time to talk after that? We should catch up. You need to tell me everything that's happened in the last month. That's what we do, right? We share every tiny detail about our day. And since the radio cut out, I figure you have a lot of days to catch me up on."

She glances up, then. She actually meets his gaze for a fleeting second as her eyes graze past and back to the floor.

"That sounds good." She admits at last. "I – I've missed you."

He sighs in relief, tries to smother the sound and ends up laughing nervously instead. Thank god. _I've missed you_ isn't much. It's pretty self-evident, he thinks. And yet it's three whole words about her emotional state, and he'll take that for the victory it is, at this point.

He hugs her again. He holds her tight, because he's missed her, but also because he wants to whisper a few private words to her without their friends overhearing.

"I'm so sorry I left you to do this alone. But I'm back now, OK? And you know you can tell me all about it."

She makes a bit of a snuffling noise, and he wonders whether she's crying. It's no problem if she is, he decides. He'll gladly hold her all day, let her hide her face against his chest for hours if that's what she needs to do.

"It's good to be back." He concludes in a heartfelt whisper.

"Welcome home." She offers, squeezing him tight.

Huh. That's a funny thought. He hates Polis, mostly. And he certainly doesn't consider this grey hole in the ground a very comfortable place. But he has to admit that he does feel like he's just come home. He supposes that's normal – that's how it feels, to be surrounded by family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter, and here's some more gratitude for Stormkpr's betaing skills. Happy reading!
> 
> Content note at end (with spoilers).

Bellamy feels somewhat better when he's showered and shaved, and is wearing a clean change of clothes. He imagines having that long overdue catch up with Clarke will make even more of an impact, but for now, this is a start.

He wonders about doing something with his hair, too. As he looks self-consciously in the bathroom mirror, and tries to ignore the strangers staring at him as they come and go from the showers, he doesn't much like what he sees. Sure, he still looks more or less fit and healthy. But he looks tired and worried, not at all like that confident young guy who first landed here. He used to feel pretty smug about his looks, he seems to remember.

He can't imagine feeling smug about much at all any time soon.

This T shirt fits him pretty well. He's almost annoyed by that – he likes them to stretch a little bit over his arms, used to take pride in being well-built around the shoulders. But maybe that month in the bunker hasn't been great for his muscle mass. And yeah, the hair is annoying him most of all. Even freshly washed, it sort of hangs there, long and limp, not curling the way he's used to seeing.

He shakes himself. It doesn't matter. He's supposed to be surviving a nuclear disaster, not worrying about his appearance. But it's an odd experience, reuniting with the love of his life after an emotional month apart. It's much easier to fixate on wondering whether she finds him attractive than to dwell on the guilt he feels for abandoning her to cope here without him.

He forces himself to leave the bathroom and head down the hall. The sooner he finds Clarke, the sooner he can figure out what's wrong.

It's late evening now, since the journey took most of the day, so he heads to the dorm he has been told his friends are sharing. That seems like a sensible place to look for someone just before bed time. Only Clarke's not there when he arrives – Madi is asleep with Miller watching over her, and Raven is reading something on a tablet whilst lounging on a nearby bed. He doesn't recognise anyone else in the room – he thinks they might be Podakru, based on the tattoos.

"Is Clarke about?" He whispers in the general direction of Raven and Miller.

Miller shrugs apologetically. Raven shakes her head.

"She's in the office. End of this hallway then turn right. It's not far."

Typical Clarke, he thinks wryly – living in a dorm that's so close to her workplace. It's as if she can't bear the thought of taking longer than ten seconds to respond to an emergency.

He nods, and wonders about getting on his way. But it occurs to him that this is a good chance to start finding out what he's missed, and from the two people in this bunker who know Clarke best, probably. If anyone has any idea what's going on with her, surely it is Raven or Miller?

"Do you know what's up with Clarke?" He asks, trying to keep it light, as if he's just asking about a grazed knee. "She seems a bit distant."

Raven nods, frowning deeply. "It's been tough, Bellamy. You've seen how crowded it is in here. And she's had fights to settle every other day – she's always on edge and pretending not to be. I tried talking to her about it, but she wouldn't let her guard down. Not to mention she's adopted herself a grieving kid." She concludes in a whisper, looking fondly at Madi.

Huh. Even Raven is fond of Madi. Bellamy never thought he'd see the day when Raven would gaze so softly at a friend's child.

He supposes Raven has said more or less what he expected her to say. It's been incredibly stressful, and tense, and Clarke has been trying to bear it all alone whilst simultaneously turning herself inside out to take care of everyone around her. That sounds about right.

But Miller has one more thought to add.

"I didn't try as hard as I should have done to talk to her. There didn't seem much point. We all knew it was you she wanted to talk to – she's still sleeps with that radio, you know."

Bellamy blinks, startled. That must be an exaggeration, he thinks. Sure, she might have held onto the radio for the sake of comfort and nostalgia. But the idea that she _sleeps_ with it? That's ridiculous. It defies sense. And Clarke is all about good sense.

He needs to get out of here. He needs to go find Clarke and help her out. He shucks his pack from his shoulders, grabs one of the blankets Clarke gave him back at Arkadia before his misadventure. He lays it gently over Madi, because he figures they're basically family now – and besides which, he doesn't like the thought of a young child shivering with only one thin blanket.

And then he sets out down the hallway in search of Clarke.

…...

Clarke tries not to stare too hard when Bellamy walks into the room.

She mostly fails.

She understands the phrase _a sight for sore eyes_ , now. The sheer relief she feels on seeing him is almost as bright as what she felt when he first came down that ladder earlier this evening – she's still adjusting to the fact he really is here. And this time he's clean and looks heart-lurchingly good, too. He's shaved and he's smiling at her broadly and yeah, sure, he looks a little tired and has lost a bit of weight, but in this moment she could swear he's the most beautiful sight she's ever seen.

She stops staring and starts hugging him. That seems like a more useful idea. She flings her arms about his neck, buries her nose in his chest, toys with the ends of his hair with her fingers.

"You could use a hair cut." She thinks out loud.

He stiffens in her arms. "Yeah. Sorry. I wondered -"

"Why are you _sorry_?" She asks, but she doesn't wait for him to answer. "I can try trimming it while we talk, if you like?"

He pulls away and frowns at her, hard. "Have you cut hair before?"

She shrugs. "A couple of kids back at the dropship. And my own the other month."

He hesitates a moment longer. He's staring a little too intently at her face, and she's not sure she likes it.

And then all at once he's shrugging and sinking into a chair.

"Go for it. I trust you."

She grins. But then the reality sinks in, and she finds herself biting her lip instead. Does she really trust _herself_ to do this? Does she have the self-control to touch Bellamy's hair for the next ten minutes without letting her emotions show on her face?

No. It's OK. That doesn't matter. This is _Bellamy_ – she's allowed to let him see how she really feels.

She grabs a pair of scissors from the desk, puts an ugly throw from the couch round Bellamy's shoulders. If there's one thing she finds odd about Bill Cadogan, it's his taste in decor. This bunker has an odd mixture of cultish symbolism and strange fashions that feel too much like cultural appropriation, and she's not at all upset at the thought of ruining this particular throw. She has a feeling that Cadogan was probably a rather unlikable guy, all in all. But she supposes he did accidentally save the human race, so maybe she shouldn't speak ill of the dead.

She combs her fingers through Bellamy's hair for a few moments before she gets to work. That's a highly necessary place to begin, of course – she needs to work through any knots. But she thinks that maybe it's doing them both good just to have this quiet moment together, too.

Sure enough, she can feel him relaxing beneath her fingertips. He starts leaning into her hands a little more, and she can hear his breathing slow down.

"You OK?" She asks softly.

He chuckles self consciously. "Yeah. That just feels really good."

She grins, pleased with his honesty. She can think of other ways to make him feel good, later tonight, if they manage to find a moment's peace and privacy. But for now he needs a haircut, and then she needs to go check in on her daughter.

She catches that thought a moment too late. It's as if she's just gone ahead and presumed they're getting together, now. It's like she's taking it as a given that they are a couple, and that sex is on the cards, and that they're going all in.

Whatever. It's probably true anyway. She lets it slide.

She takes her scissors and gets to work on the haircut, deciding that moderately sharp desk scissors will have to do the job well enough. But even now, she keeps combing through his hair with her fingers frequently, sometimes pauses to rub lightly at his scalp.

"I thought you were offering me a haircut, not a head massage." He teases.

"You looked like you needed someone to take care of you for a minute." She admits honestly.

He jerks his head a little, but she doesn't cut his ear. She's not totally incompetent at this. She gives him a moment to collect himself and decide what it is he needs to say.

"Thanks, Clarke." He opts for in the end. Just that – simple and honest.

She hums a little, keeps working on his haircut. This is really lovely. It's the quietest moment she's had this month by quite some margin. And it's so reassuring to have her hands on Bellamy's hair like this, feel him solid and warm beneath her fingertips. It makes her believe once and for all that he really has come back to her alive.

"What's it been like here?" He asks her the question plainly, but his voice is too soft for it to sound abrupt.

She considers her answer. She knows she can tell him the truth – or rather, she knows that there is no problem with him _hearing_ the truth. She's just not sure she has the words to make a good job of it.

"Difficult." She says, in the end.

"Yeah? Which parts were difficult?"

She gives a hollow laugh. "All of it. All the people. It's like I'm... on call all the time. No, it's worse than that. It's like I'm on _display_ all the time. I can't ever just let my guard down and be human like – like I can with you."

"I'm sorry. I'm back now. But people will probably get suspicious if we keep holing up here so you can _cut my hair_."

She laughs, and she knows that was his intention. "I think it's a bit late for that, Bellamy. Everyone in this bunker already seems to think we're a couple."

"That doesn't surprise me." He says, and he sounds completely unconcerned.

Huh. So he's in no hurry to deny the idea. That's an interesting development, she thinks. Maybe she was right – maybe this really is happening.

Whether it's happening or not, their friendship comes first. Supporting him will always be her priority. So as she keeps snipping carefully through his curls, she asks her own question in turn.

"How was it with your sister?"

"Really good, actually." He answers at once, voice warm. "I know we're still not perfect. We don't fit together as comfortably as we did when we were kids, you know? I guess probably we never will. But she's trying. And she seemed more... self aware about the screwed up parts of our relationship."

"Yeah? How do you mean?" She prompts, moving round to make a start on those curls that ought to fall across his forehead.

He sucks in a breath. "I mean she realised I want more than to spend my whole life driving round in circles after her. That maybe I want my own life, rather than to always be protecting other people."

"I want that for you too." She says simply.

"I know." His eyes flicker up to meet hers from beneath his too-long curls. "Thanks, Clarke. I think – it's you who made me see that was OK."

She smiles at him, gives up on pretending this conversation isn't making tears gather in her eyes. She feels a couple of them trickle down her cheeks – no very surprising consequence of learning how to let her feelings show again after a month of holding them bottled up inside.

Bellamy's there, of course. He's always there when she needs him, apart from on those horrific occasions when the Earth conspires to keep them apart. But he's here, now, hand cupped around her cheek, thumb wiping up those stray tears.

"You're OK." He whispers fervently.

She nods, because actually, she is.

"Yeah. Thanks, Bellamy. Thanks for reminding me I'm allowed to be only human."

He laughs gently. "I think you're more superhuman, actually. But if ever you need a break, feel free to invite me for another dodgy haircut."

"It's not _dodgy_." She protests ineffectually. "It's looking pretty good, actually. I think I'm about done."

"Looking pretty good?" He prompts.

She flushes. "You know how you look. Don't make me say it again."

"Don't worry. I think you -"

The door bursts open, then. Of course it does – the pair of them can never catch a break. Clarke spins on the spot, glad that she was finished cutting Bellamy's hair and didn't hurt him with the scissors when she jumped. She hears Bellamy sigh loudly, and tries not to wonder what that means.

She doesn't have time to wonder what that means. Indra is standing on the threshold, with Jaha of all people at her shoulder.

"What's going on?" Clarke asks, flustered and over half way to alarmed.

"Jaha has news." Indra says darkly.

Yes. Clarke imagines it must have been pretty damn important news, to make him come over here to a bunker full of grounders who are still suspicious of him for his role in the City of Light. She notes at least that it can't be news about the destruction of Arkadia – he's alive, and appears perfectly well.

"Clarke. You might want to sit down." Jaha says softly.

She does. She does sit down, because she knows what that sentence means. She knows that means something has happened to someone she loves – something _bad_.

And the only person in Arkadia that she feels that strongly about? It has to be her mother.

As she sinks into the couch, she notices that Bellamy seems to have shrugged off his haircut throw and taken her hand. That's kind of him, she thinks in a detached sort of way. He's a good guy.

Sure enough, when she is sitting comfortably, Jaha breaks the news.

"Your mother isn't well, Clarke. It's serious, but she's alive and stable right now. I came here because I knew you would want to know, but also because we don't have a doctor to treat her when she's the one who's sick. Niylah's doing her best."

"Can you tell me more about her condition?" Clarke asks, trying to sounds more pragmatic than panicky. "What's wrong with her?"

"I couldn't say. I'm no doctor." He says, eyes sliding away in a move that leaves Clarke pretty convinced he's lying. And really, she thinks, he wouldn't need to be a doctor to be able to give her just the name of an illness to prepare her for what she's dealing with.

So it's something serious, but that he doesn't want to tell her here and now. What on Earth could that be?

She tries to think this through. Bellamy's still here, still at her side, still squeezing her hand. _Kind_. He's a good guy.

"I'll come back to Arkadia and see what treatment she needs. Maybe I can advise Niylah. Because we can't have Jackson go – he's needed here. And – and I want to see her."

"I'll drive you in the morning." Bellamy offers at once. "We can't drive now – the battery won't last the whole way in the dark. And you shouldn't drive yourself while you're worrying about your mum."

"Clarke can come with me. I brought the rover." Jaha counters.

"Bellamy's right. We should bring a second rover otherwise we'll be stuck at Arkadia without transport back again." She says, hoping against hope that this situation will be easily resolved and they will be able to get on with settling their people up on the surface.

That's not the only reason she thinks Bellamy should drive a second rover, of course. She also thinks that going to visit her sick mother might be rather more bearable with him by her side.

She forces herself to think a little more deeply. There's more going on here than just her family and one illness.

"How are things at Arkadia otherwise? How's the fertiliser project coming along?"

"We're all alive and well. Monty's team say that they're making progress, but it's not ready yet."

She nods. That's about what she was expecting. A few more weeks or months struggling on in their various refuges. And now a sick mother to worry about, too. How the hell is she supposed to -

"Let's get this office cleaned up." Bellamy says gently, gesturing at the hair clippings that have tumbled to the floor where he dropped his makeshift shawl. "Clarke and I can do that. Indra, could you find Jaha something to sleep on? And then we'll be on our way in the morning."

She's never been more grateful for him in her life than she is in this moment – and that's saying something. She watches, silent, as Indra herds Jaha back out of the room. And then she turns to Bellamy with a shaky smile.

"Thanks."

"No problem. Figured you might want to take a quiet moment. I'll get the rubbish."

He gets started right away, sweeping hair up with his hands and into the bin. They've made a real mess, Clarke notes, but she's not sure she cares. It was worth it for how much that haircut straightened out the mess in both of their minds, she's pretty sure. She doesn't sit around and watch, because she thinks that keeping moving, being useful, will help her out right now. So she combs the hair off that ugly throw as best as she can, then leaves it folded in a corner with a vague notion of putting it in the laundry.

"I think I'm OK. I think we should go to bed." She says when they've run out of chores.

"Sure." He nods, squeezes her to his side in a quick half a hug.

She's doing OK, really, she decides as they walk down the hallway. Yes, she's very worried about her mum. But at least she can let that worry out, now, by talking to Bellamy about it or taking a quiet moment with him in the office. She doesn't feel like she has to bottle it up inside. And she finds that she's actually looking forward to getting back to the dorm, seeing her friends and Madi most of all. Madi is a person she loves who is alive and well, and that's a comforting thought.

The dorm is even more cramped that night. Indra seems to have produced a few more sets of bedding from goodness only knows where, such that the floor is a near-continuous mess of blankets and mattresses. Jackson appears to have given up his real bed to Jaha, and opted to join Miller on a cramped pallet on the floor. Clarke grins at that – the pair of them seem only too happy to share a confined space.

Madi has spent the last month sleeping on the mattress that ought to have been Bellamy's. Clarke wonders if she's supposed to move things around, share a bed with the girl. Or are they all just supposed to squish up together on this mass of adjoining bedding that Indra has laid out?

"Where do you sleep?" Bellamy asks her softly, voice pitched low so as not to wake up their sleeping roommates.

She points at her bed.

He nods. He steps over Miller's left leg, dodges Octavia's outstretched hand. And then he simply sinks straight onto her bed, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

She stares, stunned, for a second or two. Is this it? Do they share a bed now, as they have been edging towards sharing a life for the last few months? Is she supposed to just slip under the blankets at his side without comment?

He must sense her hesitation.

"Is this OK?" He checks.

"Yeah. Just – uh. Do you ever wish we could get a drink together first?"

"Yes." He says, short and decisive. "Definitely. That's what I've spent the last month wishing for. But for now let's focus on sleep and your mum. We'll get that drink sooner or later – I'll make sure of it."

She allows herself a small smile. She believes him, when he says it like that. She believes that there are good things in their future, no matter how grim the present may be.

She heads over to join him on her bed. She leans over to stroke Madi's hair for a second, checks in on the sound of her daughter's breathing. That's one of her biggest comforts, these days – to listen to this little girl her life now revolves around taking steady breaths.

And then she simply lies down and tugs the blankets up, as if sleeping next to Bellamy is a perfectly normal occurrence.

He seems to think it's nothing to make a fuss about. He appears completely calm as he arranges the blanket to his liking, and wriggles a little to get comfortable. Clarke has never tried to share a pillow with anyone before – it's hardly been a feature of her hurried hookups or brief teenage relationships. But it turns out there's not a lot of space on a pillow, and she can feel his warm breath on the back of her neck.

She can feel his arm settling around her waist.

"Go to sleep, Clarke. Stop thinking so hard." He whispers against her skin.

She huffs out a noise, somewhere between a giggle and sigh. She relaxes right back into his embrace. She even gets brave enough to reach down to where his hand is sitting politely against her stomach and cover it with her own fingers.

"It's so good to have you back." She murmurs into the darkness.

"You, too."

She thinks that's an interesting response. As far as she can see, he never really lost her – he knew for almost certain sure that she would be physically fine, in this bunker. But it warms her heart to think that he still considered her _missing_ , as long as she wasn't by his side.

There are all sorts of reasons why she should be tense, tonight. Her mother is seriously ill, and Jaha won't say what's wrong with her. And there are still the everyday tensions of leading all these people – fights and rations and the question of what the hell happens next.

But she's used to not knowing what happens next. That's life on the ground. And suddenly it all seems rather more bearable, with Bellamy here to share the load.

That's her last thought, before sleep claims her.

…...

Bellamy is briefly confused when he drifts into wakefulness with the smell of floral shampoo in his nostrils, and soft hair tickling his face and neck. This doesn't seem much like the tiny, stinky bunker he lives in.

Then the events of the previous day catch up with him, and he sighs in relief. This is real. He's here in Polis, and Clarke's doing OK, more or less. She's certainly making good use of the present he gave her, and that thought warms his heart. He's worried about how she'll cope with her mother's illness, but compared to some of the crises they've faced on the ground, things are looking almost good.

He knows they need to get up and face the day. He doesn't much want to, though. He didn't sleep at all well, that last night separated from Clarke.

She makes the decision for him, in the end. She's stirring in his arms, now, rolling over to face him.

Huh. Her lips are really very close, when they lie together like this.

No. This is not the moment he kisses her. He wants it to be _their_ moment, damn it. He doesn't want some desperate messy snogging on the floor of an overcrowded dorm, with a bunch of friends and strangers looking on. He wants it to be all about treasuring Clarke, as well as taking something good for himself. They both deserve that, after so many months and even years of being taken for granted.

"We should get going." She points out, rather unnecessarily he thinks.

"Yeah."

He hesitates, just a heartbeat. He lets his hand linger at her waist for one last second.

And then he pulls away, sits up, prepares to face the day.

They make short work of grabbing some breakfast and packing their precious few personal belongings for the journey. He notices her slipping her small radio into her pack, and grins slightly. Maybe Miller wasn't so far wrong. Maybe he'll ask about that on the drive.

At least – he'll ask her about it on the drive if he gets to ask her _anything_. He's not so sure it'll turn out that they chat much, now he's really seen her interact with Madi while the girl is awake. She talks in Trig at a mile a minute while they get ready for their journey, and it's all a bit too much for Bellamy to follow. He can more or less get by in the language, but this is beyond his capabilities. And it makes him feel very left out and stupidly jealous.

He knows that's absurd. His closeness with Clarke is not really threatened by her having a child now. And anyway, he likes children and Madi seems great. He just needs to show Clarke that he still wants her in his life even if she comes with a kid in tow.

And he needs to practise his Trig. That too.

He acts on that resolution promptly. When they are in sight of the rover, he tries to make conversation with Madi.

"Have you ridden a Mountain Men horse before?" He asks, rather embarrassed at his stumbling for words, pointing at the rover and hoping she gets the picture.

She does get the picture. She grins at him, apparently delighted to have been asked the question. "No. Never. I want to see everything."

He's not sure whether she means she wants to see the view as they drive, or wants to know more about how it works. But he's on a mission to show kindness to the girl, and showing her around a rover seems like it will be easier than holding a protracted conversation.

He therefore gives her a quick tour, pointing out the solar panels and the steering wheel, the shifter and the brakes. He doesn't know the word for any of those things in Trig, so he uses it as an opportunity to teach her a little English, too. Between the two of the, hopefully they will meet in the middle sooner or later.

He wonders what Clarke is making of all this as she stands back and watches them. Maybe he'll ask her later – again, if he gets chance to ask her anything.

Eventually it seems Clarke decides they have spent enough time learning about rovers. She starts speaking to Madi again in full-speed Trig, and this time he picks out a question about who will sit where.

"I'll drive." He reminds her.

She nods, but clearly the question was not really for him. The question was for Madi, who chooses to sit in the back of the rover and lean out the window so she can see the world.

"You can't sit like that while we move. It's dangerous." He explains.

The child frowns.

"We'll go quickly."

She frowns more. Clarke bails him out, explains that it really is true that she mustn't hang over the back of the rover like that. Madi agrees with a great show of reluctance, and sits somewhat more sensibly.

Good. Co-parenting: step one achieved.

Bellamy goes to the driver's seat, leaves Clarke to choose where she will sit. He won't object if she wants to sit in the back with her daughter – he knows she feels protective of her.

Needless to say, he's thrilled when she chooses to sit up front with him instead.

It turns out to be a lovely drive, in as much as any drive through a post-apocalyptic wasteland can be _lovely_. Jaha parked his rover a little way away, so they do not even try to drive in convoy with him. They'll see him when they arrive at Arkadia. So it is just the three of them and the rover, as they drive steadily through the desert.

Bellamy makes the most of the opportunity to catch up with Clarke, after they were interrupted last night. And yes, sure, it's different, because she doesn't have her hand in his hair or her eyes on his lips right now.

Actually – she is staring at his mouth. He notices that when he peeks across at her.

But the point is, this is not such a physically intimate moment. It's an opportunity to catch up on a month's worth of missed conversations and unanswered questions. She tells him that the food in the Polis bunker was surprisingly good, he laughs with her about the toilet bucket in the bunker he shared with Octavia. He ends up mentioning almost everything that happened in the time they were apart – the workouts, the pencil collecting, the petty arguments and heartfelt reconciliations with his sister.

Everything except the radio calls.

She's the one who starts it, in the end. She's the one who raises the topic.

"I even tried the radio a couple more times after we got cut off. Crazy, huh? I just didn't want to face the fact I wasn't going to be able to speak to you for at least a month."

"It's not crazy." He says easily, because he knows how utterly essential it feels to do a thing like that. He knows, because he's been there.

"You don't think so?"

"No. I did the same thing a few times, I guess." He has his eyes fixed carefully on the road as he gathers his courage. "I noticed you packed the radio this morning, too. I guess it's only fair I tell you I've got mine on me as well."

"Really? You have? Even though they still don't work?"

"Yeah." He swallows. "It stopped being about whether it would work, and started being about keeping myself sane."

He sees out of the corner of his eye as she turns her head to look at him. He takes a risk, glances up, sees her thoughtful expression.

"It was like that for me too." She admits cautiously.

"Yeah? That seems fair. I hope it helped?"

"Better than nothing."

"Yeah. I actually called you just yesterday morning, you know? We couldn't get this thing started at first and I was losing it a little." He tries for a chuckle, but it doesn't quite work out for him.

"As recently as that?" She asks, and her voice sounds funny.

He nods, jaw tense.

All at once, she's letting out a relieved laugh. "I called you yesterday morning, too. When we couldn't get the door open. I – I might have told a bit of a white lie, just now. I think I've called you pretty much every day since we lost contact."

"Me too. Don't know if you figured this out yet, but you're kind of important to me."

He turns to look at her, brows raised. She's rolling her eyes slightly, but she's also reaching across to rest her hand on top of his where it sits on the shifter, so he figures he can't have overstepped too badly.

The moment is broken, of course. That's the story of their lives, isn't it? It's not Jaha and Indra this time. It's a large crow taking off right in front of them, startling Bellamy and making him swerve six feet to the left.

He rights his course. Clarke gives a relieved sigh, although he's disappointed to note that she seems to have reclaimed her hand.

Madi gives an incongruously delighted laugh at all the excitement. She seems like a game kid, that one.

…...

Clarke goes to see her mother almost the second the rover stops moving, asking Bellamy to take care of Madi while she's gone. She knows he will do as she asks, trusts that her daughter will be safe with him while she worries about her mother's health. She watched him trying to make conversation with her this morning, after all. He couldn't have made it more plain that he's happy to spend time with the child.

The scene in med bay is as she expected from Jaha's warning. Her mother is unconscious, but her vitals don't look too bad. They don't exactly look _good_ either – but she's not dying this minute, and compared to your average Earth disaster, that's basically a success story.

Niylah's there, and Clarke gets on with asking her questions.

"What happened? What's wrong with her?"

Niylah doesn't beat about the bush. Clarke has always liked her plain-speaking manner. "It's those painkillers she was taking for her headaches. She kept taking them. And then she overdosed three days ago. I didn't really know what to do – Kane suggested that we should keep giving her a lower dose. We were worried about withdrawal."

"You did the right thing." Clarke assures her right away. "I'll have to figure out how fast to wean her off them. That's safer than stopping them all at once."

Niylah nods. "Apart from that I've just kept her on fluids and – and hoped for the best, really."

Clarke pulls her old friend into a warm hug. Niylah looks pretty frightened, and that's something Clarke hasn't often seen before. She supposes that the pressure of trying to keep alive their only doctor is not a light burden to bear.

"You did good here, Niylah. Really. Go get some rest."

She watches as Niylah flees from the room, looking both exhausted and relieved. And then she sets about figuring out what the hell she's going to do.

The first part is the easier part, really. She did enough of her medical apprenticeship to be reasonably confident in weaning her mother off the drugs and keeping her safe and comfortable. At least, she knows how to do that in a way that will keep her physically safe – she has much less idea whether her mother has the mental resilience to stay clean, amidst all this chaos and loss, or how she will feel in herself when she is off the medication.

Those are problems for another time. The point is, she has a plan for handling her mother's addiction. That's one thing accomplished.

The next thing is much harder. Clarke needs to solve a few logistical problems. The way she sees it, she's going to have to stay here and care for her mother. Addictions are dangerous and complicated – she can't just leave Niylah with some instructions and then disappear back to Polis, without a working radio link. And anyway, the people of Arkadia are without a doctor while Abby is laid low. It's not fair on Niylah to expect her to deal with any other medical emergency that might arise in the meantime, and not fair on the people who would be left here with inadequate medical expertise to call on.

So Clarke needs to stay here. But she can't stay here, because she needs to be leading things in Polis.

She does what she instinctively wants to do. She talks it over with Bellamy. She finds a quiet moment with him, and blurts out all the possibilities in one nervous rush.

"I need to stay here, but I should be in Polis. I wondered about going back to Polis and taking her with me, but then there's no doctor here. And anyway, it doesn't seem fair to separate her from Kane when she's so sick. And he can't come with us, because Jaha shouldn't be left to lead here on his own. But then -"

"Clarke. Stop." He lays a hand on her arm. "You know what the answer is."

She thinks she might, actually. She thinks she might well know the answer, but it's an answer she doesn't much like.

She leaves it to Bellamy to say it. "You stay here with your mum. I'll go back to Polis. Between me and O I know we can cover for you well enough. We both work well with Indra, the grounders respect O. And our people there will follow me. And – we're not the worst team in the world."

She smiles sadly. "That's a good thing that's come out of all this. You and your sister working better together."

"Yeah." He squeezes her arm. "We'll be OK. Really. I know you feel like you have to do everything and take on the weight of the world. But this is something I can do for you, OK? Let me worry about the politics. You take care of your mum. That's your priority right now – I know you don't want to be worrying about the alliance."

"And you don't think it's cruel to separate _us_ again?" She asks, thinking of what she just said about her mum and Kane.

"Of course I do. But we've faced worse, haven't we? And it won't be forever. Just until you're confident your mum can manage without you."

She nods. She leans into his side, and he understands that it's a wordless request for a hug. He wraps an arm tight around her shoulders, welcomes her into his embrace. She's pretty sure she could live a thousand lifetimes and never deserve this man. He's so steady and warm and supportive, and she thinks they balance each other perfectly.

Then again, she's probably a bit biased on that.

There's one last thing that's bothering her. She gathers her courage, takes strength from the weight of his arm around her.

"I want you to have a _choice_. That's all I've ever wanted for you, Bellamy. For you to be free to live your life as you choose. And this _sucks_ , because I feel like I'm burdening you with _my_ duty, too."

"I think I missed the meeting where we made the survival of the human race _your duty_." He says lightly. "You've ended up doing this because you're good at it, and because you care so much. But your people are not solely your responsibility, Clarke."

She leans closer into his side. She needed to hear that. She sort of objectively knew it was the truth, but she'd allowed herself to forget it, until she heard Bellamy say it, just then.

He's not done yet, though. "I'm _choosing_ to do this. I promise. If I'm going to choose what to do with my life, one of the things I want to choose is making you happy. Or at least making you less sad."

She snorts without humour. He put that well, she thinks.

"I'd like to try that for you sometime. You know, I really can't wait to get that drink."

"Same."

The silence sits. And they sit comfortably in it, and practise being less sad together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Content note: addiction and overdose.


	9. Chapter nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to everyone who has said they're enjoying this fic, and to Stormkpr for betaing. Happy reading!
> 
> Content note: addiction.

Bellamy knows that leaving Clarke behind in Arkadia will be difficult. But it won't be the hardest thing he's ever done – it doesn't have the same uncertainty as his journey to look for Octavia, for example. And he knows that they'll be reunited when Abby is well, and knows that his relationship with Clarke is solid and steady, albeit undefined.

There's one thing that's really worrying him, though. He's not sure how she'll cope here without him. Arkadia is overcrowded just as Polis is overcrowded, and here too she will be a leader with all eyes upon her. At least she'll have more of her friends from the hundred here and fewer strangers, he supposes.

All the same, he's concerned. He can't help but fear that she'll try to bottle it all up again, try to convince the world she's holding it together when she's breaking inside.

He puts off the moment they will have to say goodbye as long as possible. He stays the night at Arkadia, because there's no way the rover will get all the way back to Polis tonight. He therefore sleeps curled up with Clarke on a spare med bay cot, while Madi takes the next one along. One of these days, he swears, he and Clarke will have the time and privacy to do more than simply spoon and sleep.

That said, spooning and sleeping with Clarke is fast becoming his favourite thing.

When the morning comes, he runs a quick errand. He tells Monty to make sure there's a good batch of moonshine ready for the day they eventually settle back out on the ground. He needs to be able to get that drink with Clarke, after all.

Monty is not impressed – he even seems a little insulted, actually, and makes it quite clear that he was already planning to do just that. Bellamy wonders about hanging around a few moments and asking about chickens, too.

No. He needs to leave. And he needs to stop procrastinating.

He packs the rover. It takes seconds – he only has his small pack. He checks the battery, checks the tyres, checks everything he can. He sneaks in one last unnecessary delay, dashing to see Jasper and procuring some more shampoo for Clarke.

He really needs to stop putting this off, now.

He finds Clarke in med bay, watching over her mother.

"How is she?" He asks softly.

Clarke jumps a little, notices his presence. "About the same. Are you leaving now?"

He nods heavily.

"Let me walk you to the rover." She offers, getting to her feet.

He wonders about telling her it's not necessary. He knows his way around here, thank you very much. But he thinks maybe they both need this – the satisfaction of a proper goodbye. He therefore agrees to her suggestion, waits a moment while she instructs Madi to sit tight and go nowhere for the few minutes she will be gone.

And then they start walking down the corridor together.

He expects a heavy silence, fitting with the sombre mood of the farewell. But that's not what happens at all, in the end. He should have known better than to underestimate Clarke – she's talking away as if desperate to get all her words out before he leaves.

"Don't worry about me. Really. I've got Madi and my mum and at least Arkadia is home. And I can talk to you on that silent radio if I need help staying sane – we decided that wasn't too crazy, right?"

He laughs a little, reaches out to squeeze her shoulder. "That's definitely OK. I know I'll be calling you to talk to myself whenever things get tough in Polis."

"Are you sure you'll be OK there? Running things and having to work with your sister?"

"I think so. We've come a long way, this last month. And I'm not like you, Clarke. If I need to let off steam I'll go train with O or something. I won't bottle it up and pretend I'm OK."

She sighs. "You're saying I need to find someone to train with."

"No. I'm saying you need to find a minute to draw with those pencils I brought back for you." He says pointedly.

"You're probably right. Thanks for those, Bellamy."

"No problem." He reaches into his pocket, feeling rather less nervous and awkward than he remembers feeling the first time he got her a gift. "Here. More shampoo. I figure you must be running low by now."

Her eyes light up. "Thank you. This is – thanks. I love this stuff."

He loves it, too. Or at least he loves the smell of it on her hair, the sense that there is something connecting them even when they're apart. Most of all he loves to imagine her thinking of him every time she uses it.

Yeah, thinking of Clarke in the shower isn't going to make saying goodbye any easier.

She continues, still apparently eager to make up for the conversations they won't be able to have in the coming weeks.

"I never get you anything. I'm sorry. I should -"

"Don't worry about it. Aren't you getting me chickens when we find our new home?"

She laughs, but it's not truly a relaxed sound. He gets the sense she's laughing because he made a joke rather than because she's actually amused.

He tries again. He figures he could try to handle her concern a little more honestly. "You give me things all the time, just not pencils and shampoo. Forgiveness. Support. Self worth."

It's the biggest confession he's ever made to her, and he waits with baited breath for her response.

"You, too." She says simply. But she leans into his side as she says it, gives him an odd sort of half-hug as they walk.

He knows Clarke well enough to take that for the declaration of love it is.

They're at the hangar bay, now. It's time. He's really leaving. He covers the last few paces to the rover, stands awkwardly by the driver's side door with his hands clasped at his hips. He's so tempted to kiss her, in this moment. It feels like he's waited so long to do that. But he doesn't want this to be the day they take that step – not while she's worried about her mother, and when they're about to be parted. He wants their first kiss to be a celebration of new beginnings, not part of a solemn goodbye.

"You sure everything will be OK in Polis? I trust you and Octavia. Of course I do. But it's a lot, and Jackson will have his hands full with -"

"Maybe I'll help him. I did spend a lot of the first week after the death wave cleaning up vomit." He interrupts her smoothly, forcing his face into a grin to try to lift her spirits.

It works. She breaks into a tired smile, gives a grudging laugh. And she stops her nervous babbling, so that's progress.

She's the one who takes the step forward and initiates the hug. That's his Clarke – however tough the going gets, she's always got the strength of character to do what needs to be done. And right now, he needs to be sent on his way. He hugs her back, hard, nuzzles into her neck, knits his fingers through her hair. This isn't goodbye forever, but it's goodbye for now, and he wants a happy memory to take with him.

They pull apart and just look at each other for a moment. He compromises with himself on the kissing question, bends to press his lips softly to her cheek. That's what they do when they're finding it difficult to say goodbye – he remembers as much from the day she left him after Mount Weather.

"We'll meet again." She tells him, more declaration than prayer.

"Damn right we will. Take care of yourself."

"You, too."

He gets in the rover. He starts the engine. He drives out the door, into the wasteland beyond.

And as he looks back in his mirror, he can see a sight that brings tears to his eyes. Because there in the hangar bay, for all the long minutes until he's out of sight, Clarke stands waving. Straight-laced Clarke Griffin, leader of the human race, waving the overzealous wave of an upset child, trying to put a brave face on whilst watching someone she loves go away.

…...

Clarke watches her mother become gradually more lucid in the days that follow, as her plan to guide her carefully through detox appears to work, more or less.

For the first few days, Clarke tries not to answer her mother's questions in too much detail. Not because she wants to lie to her or avoid the difficult questions, as such. But more because Abby needs to focus wholeheartedly on her recovery right now. So Clarke answers briefly but honestly a few questions about how she came to be here, how the Polis bunker is faring, and what the world looks like outside. But she leaves it at that.

It's when Clarke has been in Arkadia a week that she decides her mother is ready for one crucial introduction.

"How are you feeling this morning, Mum?" She asks, testing the waters.

"Much better, thank you, honey." The answer has been the same every day this week, but Clarke thinks it might be almost true, one of these days.

"That's good. There's -"

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry to put you to all this trouble, Clarke. I'm sorry."

Clarke sighs. That has been a common refrain, too. And really, she doesn't see what the point is of her mother dwelling on her guilt – the damage is done now, and all she can do is move forwards and try to do better.

But she senses that this is a time more for sympathy than sharp pragmatism, so she smiles carefully. This is every bit as exhausting as acting calm and in control in Polis ever was. At least she has those precious pencils, a chance to escape into drawing after Madi and her mother are asleep each night.

"It's OK, Mum. I've told you – I forgive you. But there's someone important I want you to meet." She presses on, because she knows from personal experience that stewing in guilt does no one any good.

With that, she beckons Madi over to the bedside. And the young girl runs over with quite some enthusiasm, having been looking forward to meeting Abby ever since she heard of her existence in Clarke's stories.

Clarke rather wonders how much Madi understands about this addiction. She's seen a lot of the tough side of life in her six years, but she thinks this is probably a new experience. Clarke has tried to explain it in age-appropriate terms, cautioning that taking too much medicine or taking it for a long time can be dangerous, but she hasn't the Trig or the experience with children to know how to explain the concept of craving.

"I'm Madi. You're Abby." The girl introduces herself, accurately but not necessarily helpfully. Clarke is proud of her, though, for having a go at speaking in English.

"This is Madi." Clarke echoes. "I've been taking care of her since she lost her parents."

"Clarke's my mum now." Madi says, matter of fact.

Clarke blinks, eyes filling with shocked, happy tears. Madi has never come straight out and said it like that before, and it feels so good to hear her say it. It feels like hope, and family, and like something good has come out of the end of the world after all.

She collects herself. She hugs her daughter tight, resolves that making a big scene is probably not what Madi wants for this moment. And then she decides how to go about continuing the conversation with her mother.

Abby beats her to it, though.

"Now Clarke's your mum I guess I'm your grandma. If you want me to be, of course." She mutters, flustered. Clarke's not sure whether it's emotion or her ongoing detox that is causing her to struggle for calm, in this moment.

Clarke translates Abby's words. Madi nods, considering. "Maybe. Maybe – once we've hung out together and we know each other." The child suggests simply.

Clarke translates back again. Her mother nods, smiling. Madi nods, grinning widely.

It's a pretty odd little family, but Clarke wouldn't ask for a different one. She only wishes Bellamy could be in his rightful place at her side, in this moment.

…...

Bellamy can understand why Clarke was finding this so tough.

He doesn't have a grieving small child to care for, and does have the support of his sister to train with when he needs to let off steam or chat to when something is on his mind. Best of all, he has the radio, and the unspoken promise of a future with Clarke when all this is over.

And yet he's still struggling, in his own way.

He's different from Clarke, so he doesn't close himself off from the people around him like she did last month. He gets angry and frustrated instead, wound ever tighter, until he's spending as many hours a day as he can spare on working out alone or training with Octavia. He can feel it happening, can feel the tension building, but there's not much he can do other than keep busy and hope for the best. Surely he won't be stuck in this overcrowded bunker full of people and stressful situations forever?

He almost snaps when he hears from Indra that an Azgeda delegation has arrived from their bunker. He just can't deal with that, right now. He's never met an Azgeda warrior he liked, with the exception of the few precious minutes he spent cooperating with Roan to save Clarke, that day they drove to the island. But he hasn't forgotten that it was Azgeda warriors who stole the hydrazine that day, nor that Echo betrayed him at Mount Weather. And he knows this is the kind of blinkered angry us-and-them thinking that led to the Trikru massacre, yet somehow in this moment his temper is too short to truly care.

But then Roan walks straight into the office, and simply starts speaking.

"Bellamy. Good to see you made it. You got back here in time after all?"

He blinks. Roan is speaking as if they are friends, or at least cordial acquaintances. "Something like that." He mutters.

"That's good. And how's Clarke?"

"Don't know. She's not here." He mutters tersely.

"She's not?"

"No. She's in Arkadia with her sick mother." He presumes Clarke would want Roan to know that much – they are pretty good friends, to Bellamy's constant annoyance. But he's not about to go sharing more than that.

"Sick? Not serious, I hope?"

"Clarke's pretty confident she'll be OK."

Roan nods. Bellamy nods right back at him. He can do imposing silence every bit as well as the Azgeda king, thank you very much.

But Roan doesn't choose to stay silent for long. "So she left you and Indra in charge here?"

"More or less." Bellamy offers, torn between instinctively wanting to do his duty well but also wishing he could just laugh in Roan's face. He's a very mature guy when somewhat jealous and threatened, it turns out.

"Great. Then I'm sure you can tell me what the plan is. What's our exit strategy? Where are we moving our people to? On the trek here we saw nothing but wasteland."

"The land round here is desert." Bellamy confirms heavily. But at least this is now a conversation that is truly _about_ something, and that makes it easier to meet Roan half way, he is finding. "We're still working on a plan. Our projections show that Shallow Valley has almost certainly survived, but we haven't been able to send a team out to check that yet."

"You haven't sent a team out yet?" Roan asks, incredulous. "There's land out there we could all be living on, and you haven't _got round to_ driving to check it out?"

"It's not as simple as that." He snaps, defensive. "We're stretched thin here. Raven and Miller and I are the only people here that can drive the rover, and we're all needed here. And at Arkadia -"

"I know, Bellamy. I know." Roan sinks heavily into a chair uninvited, starts rubbing at his temples. "You're doing your best. We all are. My people are growing restless. I've got a delegation standing outside, we've just walked the whole way here. And I know you can imagine the look on Echo's face when I walk back out there and tell them we've got nothing."

Bellamy snorts. The way he sees it, that's Roan's problem, not his. If Roan was more personable, didn't rub people up the wrong way, maybe he wouldn't be facing dissent every other day. Here in the bunker, for example, Bellamy likes to think he's doing a rather good job of keeping thousands of relative strangers civil to each other.

Maybe it's time to extend the hand of friendship a little further.

"Clarke really believes in the Shallow Valley solution and so do I. I'll be going to check it out as soon as I can be spared here."

Roan nods carefully. "I'm not saying you're not doing important work here, Bellamy. I might not say it very often, but you're a competent man. But is it really so essential that it can't wait a day? Couldn't you take just a few hours off tomorrow or the next day to go check out that Valley?"

Bellamy thinks about that for a moment. He's desperate to get out of here, is bored out of his mind as well as sick of being cooped up. But he's determined to do a good job of leading these people. He wants to make Clarke proud – and maybe he wants to be able to feel proud of himself, too.

It's a tough one. His heart is urging him to take Roan's suggestion, to make a run for it at dawn tomorrow. He could always tell the rest of his allies that he was pressured by Azgeda – which is more or less the truth.

But his head is reminding him to be sensible and cautious, and to stick here so he knows everything is under control.

"I'll give it serious thought." He tells Roan in the end.

"You're starting to sound like Clarke." Roan teases.

Bellamy stiffens a little. Sure, this has been a largely friendly conversation. But he's not sure he's ready for teasing, just yet. He still finds Roan a little too pally with Clarke, all things considered.

No. That's silly, he tells himself. If he's going to use his sense to think rationally about the mission to Shallow Valley, he ought to employ logic when considering this, too. And he knows that there's no way Clarke is seriously interested in Roan, no way the two of them are going to get together right in front of his nose. He has a silent much-loved radio and bunch of heartfelt compliments ringing in his ears to remind him otherwise.

He has a future with Clarke – it's as simple as that. Or at least, he does if only he can go scout out Shallow Valley.

"Maybe you're right." Bellamy says easily, leaning back in his chair. "But we both know Clarke would have come up with some third option by now. Some clever scheme to check Shallow Valley out that neither of us has thought of yet. Drones or something."

Roan snorts. "You're probably right. She's exhausting."

Bellamy bristles. "She's worth the effort, though."

"I'll have to take your word for that. I wouldn't know." Roan says carefully, a thin smirk about his lips.

Bellamy laughs warmly, decides to go crazy and open a ration bar or two to share with Roan. Perhaps they're not the best of friends, quite yet. But for the first time in his life, he truly believes that they are not enemies, nor even rivals.

…...

Clarke almost starts to relax, as her mother heals as hoped, and as Madi becomes more cheerful and outspoken. In many ways she is more comfortable here than she was in Polis. She misses her friends there, of course, and Bellamy most of all. But here she has her mother and daughter, as well as some of her closest friends from the hundred.

She spends a lot of time with Monty, Jasper and Harper. There are no more incidents with foam in the Chancellor's office, but she does get home from a council meeting one day to find her possessions are all upside down. She tries to take it in good spirit, and Madi at least thinks it is all great fun.

And it's good to see Jasper laughing again, so she rolls with it.

She does have more serious conversations with her friends too, though. Jasper is helping the chemistry team to work on purifying water and enriching soil. Monty is particularly involved in the fertiliser project, and has great plans to use algae to turn the wasteland green again.

But today, Clarke wants to ask him about something else.

"Do we have any drones, Monty?" She asks, the moment she is inside his workshop.

He doesn't look surprised. He's used to her asking unexpected questions by now, she supposes. "No. Why do you want drones?" He simply asks.

"To go check out Shallow Valley. If we can't spare anyone to go, sending an unmanned drone seems like the obvious answer."

Monty nods, frowning. "You're right of course. But we don't have any, or the parts to make any. We took apart the drones from Becca's lab to patch things up here after the fire."

Yes. She's not surprised about that. It's a shame, but not exactly a shock.

"Anything else you can think of?" She asks the question, already moving on from her disappointment. She's learnt that's what you have to do, on the ground.

Monty hesitates a moment. He frowns ever deeper. And then his face clears and he nods sagely.

"Yes. Just one idea."

"Go on." She prompts him, a little impatient.

"You could just _go_. You could just take a rover and drive there. I know you're needed here, I get it. But I'm sure we could cope without you for one or two days. And you said yourself that your mum is doing much better. Do you think she's ready to help Kane and Jaha hold things steady here while you're gone?"

Clarke doesn't like this at all. She doesn't like the way that Monty has taken the silly idea of a spontaneous drive out into the wild, and made it sound sensible and rational and justifiable. She doesn't like it because it's dangerous, because she can feel herself on the verge of saying yes.

Then Monty seals the deal.

"You could leave Madi here. She'd be perfectly safe, and that way you don't have to worry about taking her into a sandstorm or whatever's waiting out there. It might be good for your mum to look after her for a couple of days, have a sense of purpose again. And you know I'll keep an eye on her too."

For once in her life, Clarke takes something for herself. She takes that suggestion of a precious break, a couple of days driving around in the outside world, and seizes it with both hands.

And anyway, isn't it for her people too? Isn't she hoping to find them a new home along the way?

"Yes. You're right, Monty. That's a great idea."

He just nods, calm and cheerful as always. It's as if he's saying he already knew it was a great idea, thank you very much.

She'll go tomorrow. That's what she decides, as she walks from Monty's workshop back to her mother's room. There's no reason not to go tomorrow. It's not as if she has a lot of luggage to prepare, and her people do need to find a home as soon as possible.

She makes time for one small stop, along the way down the halls. She finds a moment's privacy in a storage closet in med bay, takes her precious radio from her pack. The decision to head for Shallow Valley tomorrow feels like a big one, so she needs to tell Bellamy. She knows he won't be able to hear her, but it just feels like the right thing to do. After all, they share everything that matters, these days.

…...

Bellamy has more or less already made the decision by the time he talks to his sister. But he wants to speak to her all the same, partly because he really does want her input, but mostly because he will feel better about his choice if he has talked it over with her. It will make him feel less like it's a spontaneous moment of selfishness, he hopes, and more like it's a sensible plan.

"I'm thinking of taking a rover to check out Shallow Valley tomorrow." He says idly, as they sit in the office together. He tries to give it the air of a passing fancy rather than a desperate desire, but he's not sure he succeeds.

"You mean you've already decided, but you need me to tell you you're allowed to go." She corrects him gently.

He nods, stiff, because that sounds about right.

"I won't tell you that." Octavia says firmly.

He sighs, heart sinking. He really wants to go. And it'll be _useful_ , damn it. It's not just that he's sick of being trapped in this bunker. He's also trying to save his people here.

But it seems Octavia is not done speaking yet. "I won't tell you that, because it's not my place to tell you that." She continues. "Clarke left you in charge here because she trusts your judgement. You can ask my opinion if you want, but I'm not about to give you _permission_. I thought you wanted to learn to live your own life?" She asks pointedly.

He nods. She's right. If he had a little more confidence in his own judgement, he'd have left by now. But he lost that confidence when he followed Pike. And he's still struggling with the idea that he might be allowed to make choices without reference to his sister or his mother, somehow.

He gathers his thoughts, has a go at speaking.

"OK. Yeah. I think this is the right call, and I plan to go. But I want to hear your thoughts first in case there's something I've not thought of." That sounds about right, he decides, proud of himself. That acknowledges that he doesn't always judge things perfectly, whilst still stating his case.

Octavia simply grins at him, incongruously happy for a crowded grey concrete hole in the ground, he thinks.

"Go for it. I think it's a great idea. Stay safe out there."

He grins back, proud of the two of them. They're doing pretty well, he thinks, considering everything life has thrown at them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the change of rating for this chapter. I'm sure you can all guess what that means. Huge thanks to Stormkpr for betaing it as always. Happy reading!

Clarke finds it oddly quiet, as she drives to Shallow Valley. She's grown so used to being surrounded by people in recent weeks that it feels strange to be alone now. Most of all it is weird to be out and about without Madi – the girl has been occupying her attention almost every waking moment since they met. Clarke is worried about her, instinctively, but on a rational level she knows that Madi is safer at Arkadia right now than driving around through the desert.

She calls Bellamy several times while she drives. It helps the isolation feel less intimidating, somehow. Even though he cannot hear her, she enjoys describing every feature of the landscape to him. She likes to think he'd appreciate that, locked beneath the ground in Polis, if only the radios were still working.

The wasteland looks much as it did last month on the drive to Arkadia. Mostly flat, dry, and sandy. She really hopes this Shallow Valley projection is true, because they stand no chance of survival out here. She has a great deal of faith in Monty and the rest of the agriculture team, but it would take a minor miracle to make this land habitable.

Despite the bleakness and the loneliness, she rather enjoys the drive. She can see what Bellamy meant about the calmness of the empty road ahead, when they discussed it once before. There's something lovely about emptying her mind of all thoughts other than driving safely through the desert. It's oddly soothing, after so long trying desperately to multitask.

She's been going for several hours by the time she crests a hill and sees gold turn to green. It's surreal how quickly the landscape changes – almost as if the death wave skipped right over this valley.

It looks like Raven was right.

Clarke presses on, even though she supposes she's seen enough to confirm the projections. She decides there's no harm in scouting further, checking on the area that survived, or the quality of the soil, or whether any game has survived or homes are still standing. And besides which, she wouldn't get back to Arkadia today now, so she might as well make the most of staying. She set out planning to spend the night here, and that is what she will do.

She knows there was a decent sized settlement in the middle of Shallow Valley land, so she heads for where she believes that to have been. She only has a vague memory from Raven's map to go on, but it's better than nothing. And she's still enjoying the drive, still happy to be out exploring rather than sitting in Arkadia and feeling the pressure.

It's when she sees the tyre tracks that she first gets her suspicions.

They're recent, fresh, and they're leading down this rutted road that heads in the general direction of where she expects to find the town. That can't be a coincidence, she's pretty sure. Someone has clearly come here recently, in a rover, scouting out the land.

And there are no tyre tracks heading back again.

It has to be someone from the Polis bunker – they're the only other people with rovers. And unless they found a different route home, they must still be here.

There are only three people in the Polis bunker who know how to drive. And only one of them truly _likes_ driving, and tends to need a bit of time out to escape from his emotions, and tends to sign up for substantial missions for the good of his people.

No. She mustn't get her hopes up. This isn't necessarily Bellamy. It could well be Miller or Raven – and naturally she'd be happy to see either of them, too.

But in her heart of hearts, she's already convinced that it is Bellamy.

She laughs a little at her own foolishness. She could swear she used to let her head lead the way more often, back before she got into the habit of sharing her every thought and feeling with Bellamy. But maybe it's doing her good to allow herself to be a little more human. She definitely feels better, today, than she did during that month she spent in the Polis bunker trying to shove her emotions to one side.

All the same, she hasn't completely lost her mind. She convinces herself to keep driving steadily and safely as she heads towards the village. No matter who is ahead of her, she knows there is no point in rushing and having an accident.

In an effort to keep herself busy, she reaches for her radio as she drives.

"Hey, Bellamy. Not sure if that's you."

She pauses, leaves a beat of silence in which he would reply, if he could. She likes their one-sided chats to follow the rhythm of a real conversation.

"Anyway – if it is you, can you sit tight in the village and wait for me? Have a look around, maybe check out the houses. I'll be there any minute."

Another pause.

"I hope it's you." She allows herself to whisper. "I really, really hope it's you, Bellamy."

She sets down the radio. She thinks she can see the trees thinning, can see glimpses of colour through the branches. She drives a little further and, sure enough, this is the village. Small houses, of sound structure. Lots of colour – it's much brighter than the Trikru settlements she has seen.

And there, on the other side of the clearing, a rover is parked.

Eager to explore – and eager to find out who drove that rover here – she pulls up, hops straight out the door. She takes in the scene quickly. The rover door is open, with a trail of bootprints leading towards one of the houses. Not Raven, then – the prints are far too large and even for her. So that means it must be either Miller or -

It's Bellamy. He's here, now, dashing forwards to meet her.

She doesn't allow herself to overthink it. She runs towards him, flings her arms about his neck.

And then she presses her lips to his in a fierce and long-overdue kiss.

…...

Bellamy isn't particularly surprised to find Clarke kissing him. He heard the rover noise and concluded easily enough that he had company from either Arkadia or Polis, and once he saw it was Clarke a kiss seemed like a natural next step. He's been waiting for a private moment to steer things in this direction for quite some time now, so this makes perfect sense to him.

So he's not surprised at all, but he is remarkably _happy_. Kissing her is every bit as good as he always knew it would be – all fire and urgency and determination, but with a generous dose of tender care, too. Her lips are eager even as her hand is gentle on the back of his neck, and he tries to return the kiss in kind, knitting one hand into her hair and using the other to pull her snug up against his front.

They pull apart eventually. It seems best. They do still need to find a new home for the human race today.

"That was a nice surprise." He says lightly, with one hand still resting at her hip.

She grins. "Sorry. Too much? It's just so good to see you."

He pecks her briefly on the lips once more, just because it seems like he can, now. "Not too much at all. It was perfect."

She smiles up at him. He smiles down at her. The two of them stand there, smiling rather foolishly at each other, for several long seconds.

It is Clarke who moves things along at last.

"I guess we should check this place out. That's why we're here, right?"

He nods. "Yeah. Thought I'd come scout it out. I didn't expect you to be here too but it's a nice coincidence."

"Great minds think alike." She supplies brightly. "Are you staying the night too? I know it's not such a long drive for you."

"Yeah, that's the plan. I could probably have done it all in one day but this seemed safer."

She's giving him a considering sort of a look, he notes. He frowns lightly, still holding her against him.

"What?" He asks, brow quirked.

"I'm just proud of you." She admits, eyes sliding away. "Making the decision to come out here and do this without me or your sister, and thinking it all through. You've come a long way from _whatever the hell we want_."

"And you've come a long way from _love is weakness_." He reminds her softly.

She flushes slightly. He wonders whether that mention of love was too much, too soon. Are they supposed to pretend for a little longer that they're only very close friends? Very close friends who happen to kiss passionately after a month apart?

No. She's not bothered about it at all – only slightly self-conscious. He figures that out when she kisses him once more for good measure, before pulling away from his arms but keeping hold of one of his hands as she goes.

"Come on." She starts tugging him in the direction of the house he just left. "You have to show me around. Found us a new home yet?"

He grins down at her, squeezes her hand as they keep walking. He may be doing better at making his own choices, but this is one decision he thinks is best left at least half to Clarke.

He shows her that house – by which he means that he leads the way to the door, but then she drags him around the place, peering in every corner. And then they move to the next house, and the next and the next. They pass a productive hour or so in assessing every house in the village and concluding that they are all of sound construction, all suitable for families to move straight into.

"We won't have enough for everyone right away. Some people will have to camp while we build more." He points out, when they have investigated them all.

"Yeah. I guess we move the families with young kids in first."

He nods, because that makes sense. "See anything you like for you and Madi?"

She slants him an odd look. "I plan to let her choose when we move here. I don't want to upset her seeing as she used to live here. She might want to pick her parents' old home or she might prefer to live as far away as possible."

He nods again. That makes sense, and he feels a little insensitive for having asked the question at all.

It seems Clarke is not done talking. "If that's OK with you, Bellamy? I mean – I know we haven't really talked about it properly – but I thought we were – you know. Moving in."

He grins down at her, reaches in for a quick kiss. That's a bad habit he seems to have developed this morning – kissing her whenever the fancy takes him.

That's pretty much all the time.

"I was hoping that too." He says easily. He can hear the excitement brimming in his tone, even though there's a little nervousness there, too. It's an odd business, starting a more romantic chapter with his closest friend. And based on the expression on Clarke's face, she's feeling much the same way.

"That's good." She pauses a moment. "I get it if you want to change your mind, though. I know we first started talking about the chickens before I met Madi and – yeah. I get it if you didn't plan on having a six year old in your life."

"I'm not about to give up on you that easily." He tells her fiercely. "And anyway, I like children and Madi seems great. Sure, I didn't see us having a kid together the moment we moved in. But this is how it is, and that's fine. We'll figure it out. I just don't want Madi to feel weird about me showing up in her life out of the blue." He admits cautiously.

Clarke laughs. "She doesn't. As far as she's concerned, you've been part of the deal since the moment she met me – you just weren't around at the time. I know it might take us all a while to adjust but it's not going to be a problem."

That's it. That's the moment he truly allows himself to believe that this is happening, that what's going on here is more than a few coincidental kisses. He sags slightly in relief, a broad smile spreading across his cheeks.

And then he kisses Clarke once more for good measure.

She catches the back of his head with a hand as he goes to pull away, pulls him in for a kiss that's rather deeper and more lingering than he had planned. It's still chaste, more or less, but it's going places. It has whispers of good things yet to come.

It's Clarke who pulls away and speaks up first.

"You know, the first time I got a girlfriend on the Ark was much simpler than this. I just invited her to a movie and told her we were dating now."

He laughs. He can just imagine Clarke doing that, actually.

"I don't care how complicated it is as long as I'm building a life with you at the end of it." He tells her honestly.

He's got a lot better at total honesty, these last couple of months. He likes to think that's all thanks to Clarke.

…...

Clarke's having the best day of her life.

She feels horrible for saying that. They found dozens of dead bodies in the church and had to build a funeral pyre. They spent the early part of the afternoon raking through the homes of those lost in Praimfaya. And over and above everything else there's a tiny voice in her mind whispering that she's being selfish. That she's neglecting Madi and her mother and her duty to her people by being here at all.

But today she has the strength and joy to ignore that voice, and to combine finding a new home for the human race with having a seriously great time.

It's not just kissing Bellamy. It's nothing so shallow as that. It's more the security and warmth that comes with knowing they're totally on the same page about their relationship, the sense of belonging she feels at the idea of them setting up a family home with Madi. Sure, she's been suspecting for a while now that things were heading this way. But it's so _comfortable_ , to have everything out in the open and truly resolved.

And there has been precious little that's comfortable about Earth so far, so this hits all the harder.

That's the main reason she's so happy today, and she knows it. The joy of spending time with Bellamy and planning for their personal future, as well as the wider future of the human race, feels so much brighter now that they've survived some truly horrific ordeals. This green valley, the gentle sun, and the company of someone she loves are exactly the sort of things she used to dream of, when she dreamed of Earth. She used to draw trees like the great oaks she sees on the edge of the village, used to dream of starting a family in a cozy wood cabin, able to smell spring on the breeze.

In short, this is everything she has ever wanted. And she cannot believe it is in touching distance, not after the uphill struggle they have faced to get here.

They move away from the village in the afternoon. They take Bellamy's rover out to explore further afield, scouting for game and to investigate the quality of the land. And when Bellamy volunteers to drive, she doesn't try to stop him. She knows he's not just offering out of a sense of duty, these days, or because he feels he's supposed to drive his womenfolk around. He's offering because he genuinely quite likes driving, and that's that.

Clarke decides that her contribution to making this a pleasant road trip will be to make conversation. They've got another missed month to catch up on, after all, and they have spent more of this afternoon talking about buildings than about themselves so far.

"How are things with your sister?" She decides to start there.

"Really good." Bellamy offers easily. "It's like I've stopped seeing her so much as a _little_ sister, you know? She's more family in some other sense, like one of the hundred only more special. I don't make a fuss of her and she doesn't lash out at me. But we still have each other's backs when it matters."

She reaches over and squeezes his thigh for that. She figures a comforting gesture won't go amiss, and anyway, he has nice thighs. She's always giving his hands plenty of attention or even patting him on the arm, but now they're really together and all she figures it's time to make up the difference.

He continues to speak, which she thinks is a good and healthy thing. Maybe all that practice talking into a radio has done them both some good.

"We make a pretty great team in the bunker. The grounders respect her, and she and Indra seem to read each other's minds. And then I guess I try to think what you would do or Kane would do."

She'll take that. One of these days he's going to forgive himself for his Pike phase far enough that he'll do what _Bellamy Blake_ would do – only an older and wiser Bellamy Blake than the one she first met. But she understands that he's not there yet, and that's fine. They're both still learning and growing.

"What about your mum?" He asks now.

She sighs. Where to begin? "It's funny." She says, a million miles from laughter. "It's like what you said about your sister. It's like she's not my mother any more. Like I'm taking care of her and having to reassure her all the time. And she feels really guilty about it, which I guess I can understand but she shouldn't. Earth has been horrific so far. It's broken all of us in different ways."

He nods a solemn nod. He knows all about regretting decisions Earth has driven him to, every bit as much as she does. That's one of the reasons they understand each other so compassionately.

"We're starting over now though. Here in this valley." He points out. From anyone else, the words might have sounded dismissive, like an empty platitude. But Bellamy has his heart in his voice as he speaks and in his eyes as he peers across at her while he drives.

"Yeah. You're right. I'm so happy about this, Bellamy."

He grins, reaches out to squeeze her hand. She sincerely hopes they will stay this tactile forever, even once the initial novelty of their acknowledged relationship wears off. She thinks the odds are pretty good, considering their habit of close hugging even long before they got together.

They move onto lighter topics after that. She asks him about Roman history again – not because she particularly cares to learn more about Roman history, but because she's been nursing something of a nostalgic soft spot for the topic ever since that trip home from the lab. He asks her what she managed to draw with her pencils, and she tells him the honest truth – that she drew everything from Finn's dying breath to the vibrant trees that used to cluster on the riverbanks near the dropship. And they talk, too, about the sights they see on their journey – plenty of healthy green forest, a number of birds, and enough fresh tracks to suggest a small but tenacious population of deer.

At last, the afternoon lengthens and the light starts to fail them. Clarke suggests heading back to spend the night in the village, and Bellamy agrees readily enough, turning the rover for home.

No. It's not home yet. But it will be, soon.

Clarke wonders if things might start to get awkward between them at some point – or at least a little uncomfortable, as she and Bellamy start stepping into the unknown together. What will happen when they reach the village? Will they share food? Will they share more kisses? Will they share a bed?

Will she finally get to show him that she finds him _physically_ attractive, as well as comfortably compatible with her?

It's an odd business. She's been buzzing at his nearness all afternoon, and all these frequent kisses are not making things any easier. But there just hasn't been an obvious convenient moment to drop everything and screw. They've been keeping busy, exploring their new home while they had the light.

She doesn't know how to tell him that she wants to keep busy with his cock when it gets dark.

She needn't have worried, in the end. Bellamy handles it all with his usual paradoxical cocktail of brute force and tender care.

"You want to pick a house to spend the night in or are we bunking up in the back of a rover?" He asks lightly, as he pulls to a halt.

"What would you prefer?" She asks carefully. His words have brought on a sudden vision of consummating their relationship with a rough-and-ready hot hookup in the back of a rover, and it's getting her more excited than it probably should.

He shrugs. "Up to you, Clarke. I've got the blankets you gave me the other month so we could be comfortable enough in here."

That decides it. He wouldn't have mentioned that if he wasn't keen on the idea, she's pretty certain. And there's something about the light in his eyes that suggests to her that he might be entertaining the odd Earth-sex fantasy, here.

She tests her hypothesis.

"I think the real question here is whether you want our first time to be in a rover?"

He grins sharply. "Is it bad that I kind of do?"

She laughs. That's definitely that settled. "You want supper first or you want rover sex first?"

That has him laughing in turn, and she's glad of it. This is exactly what their first time making love should be like – matter of fact and fun, with plenty of laughter. That's how it should be between two best friends who happen to be together, she's pretty sure. And the lightness isn't taking away from the sexiness at all – if anything, it is only reminding her with force that this is _Bellamy_ , and she wants him like she has never wanted anyone in her life before.

"Supper can wait." She informs him briskly, unlacing her boots. She kicks them off eagerly, then climbs through to the back of the rover.

"I'll second that." He agrees, toeing off his own boots and following her.

"Where are these blankets?"

He tugs them from his pack, lays them out on the bottom of the rover. And then he turns to look at her, brows raised, eyes filled with humour and heat and everything that defines _them_.

"Any requests, _Princess_?"

The shock of the old nickname shoots right through her, toes curling in sudden arousal. He's trouble, this man, but he's _her_ trouble. She sort of wants to fight back, banter with him like the bickering that defined their early relationship. She could say something about _having fun_ , or make an innuendo about shooting straight.

But she's never been a patient woman, and right now she just wants to make up for lost time. She steps forward, kisses him hungrily on the lips, tangles her fingers in his hair and then uses them to tug him slightly back from the kiss.

He groans when she does that, and it's utterly thrilling.

" _Whatever the hell you want_." She tells him, laughing against his mouth.

He snorts, chases her lips for another kiss. She tugs at his hair a little more, gets him groaning slightly louder. He loses patience with her, grabs at her arms and tugs her playfully against him – hard enough to show her he's taking charge for a moment, but not hard enough to make her uncomfortable.

"It's a serious question." He murmurs against her ear, before ducking to kiss his way down her neck. "I want this to be good for you, Clarke."

"Bellamy. It'll be good. You're _you_."

He sighs, buries his face in her hair for a moment. "Are we seriously bickering over who gets to take the lead here?"

She nods, laughing, because that does seem to be true. "I always found your cocky strong guy routine at the dropship hotter than I liked to admit. So go for it." She recommends, without self-consciousness.

"You see I always found you trying to boss me around and taking charge pretty hot." He admits, still inexplicably kissing along her neck.

Ah. So that's what's really going on here. She giggles a little more, but it comes out breathy, because Bellamy seems to have moved on to sucking lightly at the soft skin of her neck, and it's playing dangerous games with her insides.

"We're going to take it in turns." Bellamy decides, pulling back to look her in the eye. "We can mix it up, right? We have the rest of our lives to try loads of things. But today I'm going to lie in the back of a rover and you're going to ride me until I'm crying your name."

She shivers. There's something about the way he says it that makes her absolutely certain he's thought about this before. That he's fantasised about it for months – maybe even that dreams like this were what saw him through all those long rover drives without her, in the approach to Praimfaya.

And the hottest thing of all? She still feels like he's flexing his strength for her, here, by ordering her to play her part.

She nods, uncharacteristically meek. She'll do this for him. She'll do whatever he wants her to do in the bedroom or in the rover, within reason. She'll be good for him.

She looks him firmly in the eye and gives him what he wants.

"Take your clothes off and lie down for me."

He whines slightly, tries to reach in for another kiss. She pulls away, brow quirked. "You heard me."

He pouts, but she can see the excitement in his eyes. He strips quickly, and she does likewise. She can see his gaze on her breasts as she removes her bra without ceremony, can see the hunger as he looks at her.

They've waited a long time. And she thinks that making him wait just a few more seconds before allowing him to touch her breasts might stretch out even more beautiful tension for both of them.

"Lie down." She repeats.

He does. He lies on the blankets and looks up at her, pleading silently. She relents, straddles him so she's sitting on his stomach and presses a quick kiss to his lips.

"This OK?" She mutters briefly in his ear. She's wary of breaking the mood, but she wants to check she's got the right idea.

"Perfect." He assures her, reaching in for another kiss.

They kiss a bit longer. She thinks she's made her point, set the tone he wants. And she's got a long hard cock jutting into her butt cheek to reassure her of that. She's looking forward to spending more time with that cock, in the months and years ahead.

But more than anything, she's looking forward to spending more time with _Bellamy_.

Their kisses grow more heated, their hands grow more curious. She reaches for his hand and moves it to her breast, telling him wordlessly that he's allowed to touch her there, now.

That's not quite right. She _needs_ him to touch her there. She's getting wound up pretty quickly, here.

"Clarke -" Bellamy groans her name, bucking his hips towards her uselessly.

She grins. She likes this. She can feel his toned stomach flexing against her sensitive clit, and the raw strength that has him shifting her weight so easily is something of a turn-on too.

"I've got you." She promises, kneeling a little higher and positioning herself over his cock. "You good?"

He nods. She eases down onto him, lets out a gasp of shocked pleasure at the fullness. Bellamy smiles up at her, heart in his eyes.

This was worth waiting for, she decides in that moment. Sure, she still wishes they hadn't had to. She wishes their lives had played out differently – more _safely_ , for one thing. But she'd willingly live a thousand lifetimes if that's what it takes to earn a moment like this with Bellamy.

She gets moving, starts rocking her hips above him. He's moaning in pleasure within seconds, so she decides to stretch his self control even further. She cups a hand about his head, tangles her fingers in his hair and tugs his head towards her breast. He gets the picture, latches onto her nipple and suckles gently while she holds his head cradled against her.

It feels so good she almost falls apart on the spot.

She holds it together, concentrates carefully on keeping her strokes up and down his cock as long as possible. She wants to tease herself a bit further, wants to get him wound as tight as possible too. She knows it'll be worth the effort of drawing this out for a few moments more.

She lets his head go, allows him to relax back onto the floor of the rover so he's looking up at her, grimacing hard, eyes losing focus. She shifts her hands, clasps at his shoulder, nails biting down hard on firm muscle.

"Clarke!" He was right, it turns out. He really is crying her name. "Yes, Clarke. Clarke -"

She cuts him off with her lips, kisses him messily for a few seconds. But she's going to come soon, and she wants to sit up for that, wants to feel the full length of him hitting deep inside her and the delicious pressure of his hips as she grinds down on them for good measure. So she rocks back, hands still clenched on his shoulders, gasping for breath.

"You feel so good." She tells him, because it's the truth. "Gonna come soon. Gonna come on your -"

She does. She doesn't even manage to finish the sentence. She comes hard, clenching around him, sagging weakly forwards onto his chest. And she doesn't have so much as a moment to be mildly embarrassed about coming so quickly, being so transparently _gone_ for him, because he's there seconds later, spilling inside of her, bucking his hips hard even while she lies breathless on top of him.

They lie where they are and catch their breath in great stuttering sighs.

"I knew we'd be great in bed." Bellamy says idly, when he can talk in whole sentences. His voice doesn't sound _arrogant_ , as such, not like the man she met at the dropship. But he does sound comfortably confident in this truth.

"You can say that again." She laughs, still breathless, still wondering whether the world has shifted on its axis or whether it's only that her world now revolves around him once and for all.

She peels herself away from him and forces herself to recall that it's not strictly true. Her world still revolves around leading her people and caring for Madi – one duty which she loves far more than the other. But Bellamy plays a major and now rather more defined role in her life, and that's _awesome_.

They curl up together in the blankets. Clarke knows they ought to put some clothes on before they get cold, just as she knows that they ought to eat some supper or note down their findings from the day. But that can wait a moment, she's pretty sure.

"Thanks, Clarke. That – uh – it was even better than I imagined." He laughs, a little awkward and self-conscious for the first time since the kiss that afternoon, she thinks.

"It was a good idea of yours. Any other fantasies you want to share?" She comes right out and asks it.

"Maybe later. You?"

She thinks about it. She doesn't really know where to start, if she's being honest. It's a good job they have their whole lives ahead of them, because it's going to take a good few months at least to get through everything she wants them to try in bed.

"Yeah. Like you said – later. We should really eat something and then talk about plans for this village."

He laughs a little, presses a kiss to her sweaty forehead. "Sure. Whatever the hell you want."

She sits up slowly, starts reaching for her clothes. But there's still one last thing she wants to say, before the mood of this moment flees forever. She wants to make it clear that she seriously enjoyed that, and that she wants this to be a passionate sexual relationship rather than only two close friends who happen to live together.

"How many more times do you think we can manage before I have to leave in the morning?" She asks pertly.

He laughs, sits up into a kiss. She tries not to stare too hard at the way his stomach muscles move with the motion, and mostly fails.

"Give me ten minutes and I'll probably be good to go again." He says, and she's not convinced he's joking.

"Ten minutes?" It's half disbelieving, half excited squeal.

"What can I say? You're beautiful and I've been in love with you for months." He says, as if that's something he can just come out and say like that. As if it's the most obvious and matter of fact confession in the world.

Maybe it is, she wonders. Maybe that's how it was always going to be, for them. Maybe the radio calls and the lengthy separations and the way fate seems to have conspired against them were always going to lead them here.

"I love you too." She tells him easily. She seems to remember she found it harder to talk about her feelings, before she spent so many hours on the radio with this man.

He smiles softly at her, reaches up to cup her chin and brush a gentle thumb over her cheek. But all the while, there's a teasing light in his eyes.

"What? No compliment for me?" He jokes, words barely louder than a whisper.

She rolls her eyes, reaches forward to kiss him. "You know how you look. You're gorgeous. Happy now?"

"Never been happier." He admits, voice hoarse.

Yes. She supposes that's probably true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	11. Chapter eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome to the penultimate chapter! Huge thanks to Stormkpr for betaing this and to all the readers who have stuck with it so far. Happy reading!

Bellamy knows his back won't thank him for this. He's young and fit, sure, but human beings simply aren't designed to spent the night sleeping on the cold hard floor of a rover. He supposes he might have been more comfortable if he hadn't been so keen to prioritise Clarke's comfort – giving her as much of the blankets as she would accept, having her head pillowed on his chest. And yes, maybe the sex against the cold hard floor didn't exactly help. Maybe they ought to try using an actual bed sometimes once they move in together.

He knows all this, and yet he has no regrets.

He wakes up first the next morning, simply lies there and holds Clarke for a long time. He wonders whether maybe he's spent his whole life dreaming of something like this, even if he didn't realise it until recently. Maybe craving a steady relationship and believing he would never be able to have one because of his sister goes some way towards explaining why he was so restless as a younger man.

He likes everything about this – except perhaps the uncomfortable makeshift bed. He loves the feel of Clarke in his arms, the sound of her breathing soft with sleep. It's so calming, to see and hear and feel her being utterly at peace like this. It's all he's ever wanted for her, and for himself.

To be honest, even the bed isn't that bad. They've both faced worse on Earth. And the fantasy-fuelled rover sex definitely made it worthwhile.

Clarke wakes up later than Bellamy is used to her waking. He supposes that's probably no bad thing – she could use the rest. Sure, he's a little sad that their precious time together is shrinking fast, but he knows they can make up for that missed time when they settle here soon.

"Love you." She whispers, while she blinks and takes in their surroundings.

"Love you too." He murmurs back easily. He can hardly believe his luck, that they're now in a situation – both logistically and emotionally – where they can simply relax and be together.

"Have you been awake long?" She asks.

"Yeah. Or kind of dozing. I'm not complaining though. It was good to just rest and cuddle for a while."

She smiles up at him, already looking rather less sleepy and more like the businesslike woman she is by day. He hopes that when they live a peaceful life here, she might learn to truly sleep in of a morning. To stay soft and relaxed even once she is starting to wake.

Today, though, is evidently not that day.

"Stay there." She orders him, brisk but affectionate. "I figure we have time for something fun before I have to leave."

With that, she scoots down the length of their makeshift bed, half-burrowing under the blankets, until her face is hovering mere inches away from his morning wood.

Huh. Is this what it will be like, to live with Clarke?

"What are you doing?" He asks gently. He knows what she's doing on a practical level, but he sort of wonders why she feels the need to do it within seconds of waking up.

"Saying good morning." She tells him, with a pert smile. "And I figure it's only fair. I came more times last night."

"Clarke. That's not how this works. I want this to be one part of our lives that's not about duty and obligation."

"I know." She agrees with a nod. "Maybe I put that wrong. I should have said I want to do this because you got to taste me last night and I'm jealous I didn't get to taste you."

He laughs, nods eagerly. That does sound better. He reaches out to tuck a strand of Clarke's hair behind her ear, makes it clear with a wave of his hand that she's welcome to say good morning to him however she thinks best.

He's well-pleased with his choice, mere seconds later, when his cock is hitting the back of her throat and he's swallowing down a groan. Good god. How is it that this woman seems to be so talented at everything she attempts – whether it's sucking him off or leading the human race? He relaxes and enjoys the moment, tangles his hand in her hair. He sort of has the intention of scratching gently at her scalp, but before long he finds that he is more tugging at her hair and trying to get deeper down her throat.

Huh. He should probably stop that. He doesn't want to hurt her. He forces his hand to be still, drops it away from her head.

To his surprise, she whines loudly. And then she releases his cock with a wet popping sound of her lips, and speaks to him.

"I was enjoying that." She chastises him, eyes teasing.

"You were?"

"Yeah. My turn to order you to have your way with me, this morning?" She demands.

He laughs. He can see her point – this is an uncanny repeat of where they found themselves last night.

He's only too happy to tangle his hand back into her hair, now she's said that. He's all for making Clarke happy, and he's all for trying a range of things in bed. He sort of wonders if sex might become his new favourite hobby. He's never thought of it like that before – to him, hobbies have always been things like reading, and sex more of a bodily function. But playing around with Clarke like this is definitely an enjoyable past time.

Could they spend whole afternoons doing this, in future? Entire swathes of the day where they get someone to babysit Madi so they can just lounge around and touch each other? That sounds like a good use of peace time, he thinks. That sounds like heaven on -

His thoughts are interrupted by his own loud groan, as Clarke takes him deep down her throat once more. He responds eagerly, bucking his hips up into her mouth, his hand on the back of her head holding her firmly in place. He's still not sure about this, really, but she reaches up to hold his other hand and squeeze it tight, so he supposes that's her way of reassuring him that he's not hurting her in the slightest – rather, she's having a good time down there.

He draws out the pleasure for several long minutes, thrusting into Clarke's face, holding tight to her hand, relishing everything about the experience. It's not just the feel of her mouth on his cock – it's also the setting, the words of love so recently shared, even the scent of her floral shampoo he can smell hanging in the air. But all the same he manages to make the moment last – probably all that sex last night helped his fuse to be a little longer, this morning.

At last, he can't hold it back any longer.

"Clarke. I'm gonna come."

Another squeeze of his hand, a moan deep in her throat that he can feel vibrating against the head of his cock.

That's when he falls apart, spilling inside of her, sighing her name.

He finds himself chuckling, when it is over. Chuckling at his own eager enthusiasm, perhaps, or at her playful side, or just laughing from sheer relief that they have made it this far.

"You're too good at that." He says lightly, giving her a hand to scoot up the bed.

"You're pretty great at taking it." She teases, pressing one precious kiss to his chest before she settles in for a cuddle.

Huh. Right above his heart. He wonders whether that was deliberate?

Who is he kidding? Of course it was deliberate. This is Clarke – she's probably had that little gesture planned for months.

…...

Clarke knows she's dawdling. She knows she ought to get started, knows that it is now late morning and it will take her the better part of the day to get back to Arkadia.

She knows she's wasting time, but she does it anyway.

It's just too pleasant, hanging around here with Bellamy. After the leisurely blowjob, there's a leisurely breakfast, and then a leisurely stroll round the village. And it's all too easy to pretend that this is real life, that they can stay here forever without the slightest concern.

But it's the thought of Madi that finally convinces her to head home. No – to head back to Arkadia. This valley already feels like home, for all that she has spent only the one night here.

She sighs. She should go. She'll tell Bellamy she's leaving, any moment. But first she's going to hold his hand for just a second longer, spend another mere heartbeat gazing at the beautiful, colourful village before she leaves.

"I take it you're leaving now then?" He asks softly.

She glances across at him, startled. She said nothing, she's pretty sure.

He grins. "That sigh. I know what that sigh meant, Clarke. Go on – I want you to get back before dark. Get going."

She nods. She's so proud of him and the progress he's made, these last couple of months, between trusting his judgement again even while listening to his heart.

"It's just a week." She reminds herself as much as him. One week is the timescale they settled upon for preparing for the move here, when they made their plans last night.

"Only seven days." He agrees, squeezing her hand.

With that established, she turns to walk back towards the rovers, and he keeps pace at her side.

They don't make it a long drawn-out goodbye. There's no point – lingering doesn't make it any easier to say farewell. And anyway, Clarke knows they'll be here again soon. But there's a difference between soon and now. And she was really quite enjoying now, for a while there. It's a long time since she's felt such joy from simply living in the moment.

She kisses Bellamy soundly on the lips, then buries her face in his chest while she hugs him tight. And even as she is holding onto him, she's holding just as tightly onto the knowledge that they will meet again in just one week's time. She's cradling that fact close to her, like something precious.

"I love you so much." He whispers fervently, hot breath tickling her ear.

She smiles to herself. They've been saying that precious word a lot, in the last day. She hopes they keep on reminding each other of their love often in the years to come.

"I love you more than you can imagine." She tells him, nuzzling against his shirt, breathing in the scent of him. She never used to think of herself as a woman who spoke so effusively about her emotions, but all those calls and conversations with Bellamy have done her a lot of good.

And then it's over. Then she's pulling away from the hug, pressing one last kiss to the soft skin of his neck as she goes. She's climbing into the driver's seat of her rover, starting the engine.

She's driving away down the track, leaving Bellamy to stand there and wave her off.

He'll stay in the valley a couple more hours. That's the plan. Polis is so much closer that he can spare a little time to finish surveying the wildlife and food sources without her. So it is that Clarke watches him in her mirror until a bend in the track takes him out of sight.

She keeps smiling, as she drives through the forest. This land is beautiful, and it will be her home soon. She will live here with Madi and Bellamy and her mother and everyone else she cares about, and life will be kinder to them than it has been of late.

But she stops smiling, when she leaves the trees. When the landscape gives way to endless golden sand and empty skies and barrenness.

It's harder to believe the last day was real, out here. It's harder to believe that there is a peaceful future for the human race, or that there is a personal future for her. It's harder to believe that Bellamy loves her, when all she has is a slight soreness in her hips to remind her of it.

No. That's not true. It must just be the loneliness of the landscape getting to her, or the anxiety of going back to a tough week in Arkadia.

She knows Bellamy loves her, and she has far more than some sex-fuelled soreness to prove it. She has shampoo and radio calls, pencils and stories. She has a crick in her neck where she spent the whole night sleeping cuddled onto his chest, no matter how uncomfortable.

Most of all she has the promise of a future with him, and she knows Bellamy keeps his promises.

…...

Bellamy isn't sure what reaction he's going to get from his sister, when he arrives back at Polis and tells her everything about his time with Clarke – or nearly everything. Strangely there are a few choice details he edits out. But yes, he's maybe expecting disbelief, or shock, or even for Octavia to ask whether he has hallucinated the whole experience.

One thing he is certainly not expecting, and that is wry laughter.

That's what he gets, though. Octavia chuckles, shaking her head, and leans back in her chair.

"I should have known." She says lightly.

"What?"

"I should have known Clarke would be there too. You two have always been uncannily good at communicating."

Bellamy smiles sheepishly. "Yeah. You might be right."

"Is she well?"

"Yeah. Yeah, she's really well. She's been doing better in Arkadia than she was that first month when she was here. And – uh – I like to think hooking up with me might have helped."

Octavia splutters, chokes on another laugh. "Thanks, Bell. Good to know you have such a high opinion of yourself. Never brag to me about your skills in bed again, please."

He snorts. "I didn't mean it like that." He defends himself – although for what it's worth, he's pretty sure Clarke was impressed. "I mean we finally got together and talked about – about us."

"Took you long enough. When you say you talked about it – you really mean it, right? You mean you swapped love confessions and planned your future, not just some silly cop out and uh, shall we maybe try dating?"

More laughter from both of them. It's a good evening to end a good day, Bellamy decides.

"I mean we got it right at last." He assures her, smiling easily. He just can't stop smiling, today. "She wants me to move in with her and Madi right away once we get to the valley."

"Then I guess this is my last week to torment you, big brother." The words are said in a teasing tone, more or less. But Bellamy can tell there's real insecurity there, too.

"I'm not going to stop being your brother just because I have a family, O. Let's be honest – Clarke's been my family for months and it didn't stop me coming after you. It didn't stop me loving you." He forces the word out, finds that it comes easier to say it to his sister, now that he's grown used to discussing such things with Clarke.

"Thanks, Bell." Octavia swallows loudly. "Love you too."

He moves the conversation on, then. He knows neither of them is ready to sit around and talk about love all evening – and maybe they never will be. And that's fine, he figures. He'll take that, so long as their relationship remains healthier than it was just before Praimfaya. He wouldn't expect perfection – he just likes that things are functional, now.

"I guess you'll be an aunt soon." He says lightly.

Octavia laughs again. "You're that convinced she's pregnant already? Again, Bell, please shut up bragging about your sex life."

"No, I mean Madi. Clarke makes it sound like the kid's already decided I'm her foster father."

Octavia stills at that, adopts a facial expression more serious and sober than he's seen so far this evening. And then she sucks in a breath and speaks.

"That could be good. Being an aunt, I mean. I can't imagine being a mother, now I've lost Lincoln. I know I shouldn't say never but... not soon. So I'd like to be an aunt."

"That's just as well. Madi won't have any other aunts to rely on." He points out, because obviously she won't – that's how the single child rule works.

Octavia smiles softly. It's an expression he's not seen on her face for quite some time, and it suits her, he thinks.

"The only aunt in Skaikru? That sounds pretty cool."

Bellamy nods, smiling. In a day that has been filled with good things, seeing his sister learn how to be happy again is one of the best of all.

…...

Clarke tells her daughter and mother the good news first. She'll tell Kane next, of course, and then she'll crack on with the business of preparing her people for the move.

But she wants to take a few precious minutes, first, to share some happiness with her family.

"Raven was right. Shallow Valley survived." She speaks in English, because Madi has picked the language up quickly, being young and bright. So long as the sentences are simple, she'll follow the conversation just fine.

"And?" Abby prompts gently.

"What do you mean?" Clarke asks.

"That's good news. But it's not much of a surprise, and it doesn't explain why you look so totally happy." Abby points out shrewdly.

"Bellamy was there." Clarke confesses, grinning broadly. She feels almost fizzy with excitement about it all. "It was the best coincidence – he was there to check it out too and we ran into each other. It was good to spend some time together."

"Bellamy was there?" Madi repeats. Ah, yes. Perhaps in her excitement Clarke has got a bit carried away here – she's not sure that Madi knows the word coincidence just yet.

"Yes. We talked a lot." She throws her mum a sharp grin, but edits her words for Madi's sake. "I asked him to live with us, Madi. I hope that's OK?"

"It's great!" Madi enthuses, bouncing on her toes at the very idea of it. "Will he tell me stories? Will I have a little brother or sister soon?"

Clarke doesn't miss the way her mother starts sniggering at that. All the same, she keeps a calm expression as she lets Madi down gently.

"Maybe one day. But not soon – we have a lot to figure out first with moving everyone to the valley."

Madi nods. Abby smiles brightly. Clarke sits, relaxed and happy, soaking in the good mood.

Until that good mood changes, all at once, with one quiet question from Madi.

"Where will we live? Are the houses still there?" She asks, plaintive, switching back to Trig. That's a sign she's struggling emotionally as much as linguistically, Clarke knows.

Clarke swallows. "The houses are still there. We wanted to ask you about that – do you want to choose one of them to live in? Or if that upsets you, we could build a new one."

"I want us to live in my old house." Madi states, firmly and immediately. "It's my house. I know you're Clarke and Bellamy, not nomon and notu. But you're my mum and dad now, and my family should live in my house."

"OK. That's fine, if that's what you want. Whatever will make you happiest." Clarke says fervently, pulling her daughter into a hug.

It's a good hug. Madi makes a few agreeing noises, confirms that she really does want to move back into her old home. Clarke holds her tight, rubs a hand over her small, shaking shoulders.

Then comes the big surprise. Then comes Abby, walking hesitantly across the room. Holding her arms out slowly, as if waiting for permission.

Clarke nods. And so it is that Abby joins the family hug, and the three of them support each other.

…...

It is somehow both the longest and the shortest week of Bellamy's life, all at once.

On the one hand, his excitement about taking his people to their new home, and most of all about moving in with Clarke, keeps him upbeat and keeps the seconds ticking by briskly. But on the other hand, there is so much to do, and he misses Clarke even as he eagerly awaits their new life together.

It's a mess – but it's the happiest mess he's come across, since he came to Earth.

He ticks things off his to-do list, one at a time. Indra is invaluable, organising their supplies for the march. Octavia makes a list of the families with young children or elders or mobility difficulties who will need transport by rover to the valley, rather than walking. And he delegates to Raven the task of driving to the Azgeda bunker and telling them the plan – not just because he wants to avoid Roan, but also because he caught Echo staring at Raven an awful lot when the delegation was here. It's not that he's trying to interfere in his friend's love life or anything, he just thinks it's worth giving both of them the chance to figure out why Echo was staring in quite that way.

OK. Maybe happiness has turned him into a romantic fool. But then again, he always was prone to emotional foolishness.

It's day five of seven when Bellamy summons Miller to the office for an important conversation. By summons him to the office, of course, he means he catches his good friend at breakfast and says he'd like a word.

Sure enough, Miller stops by, calm and cheerful as always, striding through the door with that manner that never fails to make Bellamy confident in the fact that Miller has everything under control.

He couldn't ask for a better friend or colleague.

"What can I help you with?" Miller asks easily. Bellamy's pleased about that – Miller still treats him as a real human being, even when he's in charge.

"I wanted to ask you about security arrangements for the Shallow Valley settlement. Do you think we'll need some kind of peacekeeping force?"

Miller considers the question, frowning deeply. "I think things are good round here. You've seen it yourself – barely any disputes in the last couple of weeks. And there are enough genuine friendships between the clans now that I wouldn't expect anything to kick off. You know the other day I saw Layla reprimanding one of her own men for taking his bad temper out on a Podakru kid."

"Yeah. I heard about that. But do you think it will stay that way when we're in a new environment?"

Miller frowns a little harder. "I think so. Maybe that's just me wanting to look on the bright side. But think about all the conflicts we've seen on Earth – or even the tensions on the Ark. Trouble happens when people are jealous or suspicious or scared. But these people know each other well now. And we're going from a place where it's cramped and supplies are short to somewhere more comfortable."

"I'm still worried about the mix of people from this bunker, Arkadia, and the Azgeda bunker."

"Yeah. Sure. But I guess I'm saying we don't need a massive show of force. And I think the people in this group will carry on like Layla did the other week – calling each other out and taking care of each other too."

Bellamy nods. It's a nice idea, but he just hopes that it really happens. He supposes that's not a totally empty hope – he has observed many of the same phenomena as Miller mentioned, and mostly called his old friend here because he wanted to check he wasn't completely delusional by suspecting that keeping the peace might not be so difficult.

Miller is not finished yet, though.

"I think it's going to be like we saw when we were first down here. You need people they respect to be visible in positions of power and setting a good example. Indra really commands respect, and so does Clarke. Once Layla and Clarke hit it off, that was all it took. We just make sure those key characters – and people like Roan and Kane – set the tone."

"And you." Bellamy adds easily.

"What do you mean?" Miller asks.

"And you. You're on that list of people who command respect and defuse tense situations. Clarke's told me loads of stories about that first month, and I've seen you in action since I've been here myself."

Miller frowns hard. It makes Bellamy want to laugh – that this man has still not noticed, even after all this time, how deeply people respect him.

"Why do you think it's you I'm having this conversation with?" Bellamy asks, to drive home his point.

There's a beat of silence. Miller frowns harder. Bellamy allows himself to start grinning slightly, almost half way to laughter.

And then Miller nods, once, decisive.

"Thanks, Bellamy."

"Any time. If ever society starts using money again, I'll owe you a raise."

Miller laughs a self-conscious laugh, then heads out into the hall with a new spring in his step.

…...

Clarke feels even more excited than the children look, on moving day.

Madi is bouncing and chattering and half-hanging out of the window of the rover. Ethan Hardy is trying to throw a ball around in the back of the moving vehicle, while his father tells him sternly to stop.

Clarke wants to laugh. It's clearly a lost cause. And yeah, sure, she'd rather not have an accident because some kid is playing ball while she's driving, but she accepts that kids are going to want to play ball on a day like this.

She admits defeat, in the end. She stops the rover on a patch of sand which is slightly shaded by the crest of a hill. It's not much, but it's enough.

"Why are we stopping?" Madi asks, petulant. "I want to get there and see Bellamy!"

Clarke snorts. She knows the feeling. But she figures Bellamy can wait half an hour extra, if this is what it will take to allow the kids to let off some steam. Naturally they are fidgety and overexcited after so long cooped up.

"We're stopping to play ball." She announces. "Ethan, that looks like a soccer ball to me. You know how to play?"

Ethan looks sheepish. "A little. Not well. I couldn't really practise on the Ark."

"Well we're going to spend a half hour practising now." Clarke announces.

With that, she jumps from the rover, Madi scrambling behind her. Ethan and his father hop out of the back, while the other families hesitate a little longer.

"Come on out, guys. The sun's bright but we'll be safe for a few minutes." Clarke recommends.

They do follow, then, blinking in the bright light. The rover is not large, so it must be cramped in the back, she knows. Along with Ethan and his father there is also the Hooper family – two parents and a kid – as well as Jacob Jones and his mother. And they haven't complained about the squished conditions so far, so she feels like they all deserve a bit of a run around now.

The parents as much as the children, to be honest.

Ethan was being overly modest about his soccer abilities, it turns out. He kicks the ball around competently, and before long the two Hooper parents have elected to stand still and act as human goalposts. Clarke cannot resist joining in – she used to love watching soccer with her family as a kid, and she's excited at the thought of teaching the game to Madi, now. Within minutes even the shyest of the kids is joining in, and the parents are taking part in their various ways.

Clarke likes to think she's had some pretty great ideas, in her time as acting leader of the human race. The schedule for distributing the nightblood, or the way she broke up some of those fights in the Polis bunker. But she thinks this might just turn out to be one of the best ideas of all – it's so simple but effective, such an easy and convenient way of bringing people together.

Maybe they ought to play soccer in Shallow Valley. Maybe the grounders also have sports the people of Arkadia could learn.

Maybe building this community really will turn out OK in the end.

Clarke intended to play the game for about half an hour, then get driving again. But in the end they spent a little over an hour kicking the ball around, and she doesn't begrudge it in the slightest. If anything, she's hoping the kids might tire themselves out and fall asleep for the rest of the drive.

But at last, she decides it's time to call a halt. Ethan Hardy has finally managed to burn off his energy, and is leaning tiredly against his father's side.

"Come on. Let's get moving." She suggests.

"Time to go home?" Ethan asks.

"Time to go to our new home." She emphasises.

She wonders for a moment whether Madi will argue, or even be upset by that choice of words. There's something about the frown lining her daughter's brow that makes it quite clear that she has more to say.

It turns out that what she has to say is nothing of the kind, though.

"We have to teach Bellamy how to play soccer when we arrive. I don't want him to miss out." She says, with all the straightforward affection of a child who does not want someone she cares about to be left out of fun and games.

"Maybe you can teach him, now you've learnt. That might be a nice thing for you to do together." Clarke suggests, thinking back to her conversation with Bellamy about how it might be interesting for them to learn to live together so suddenly.

"You have to come with us too. We can make it a thing for the whole family." Madi insists, pouting slightly.

Clarke grins. That's certainly an idea she can get behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	12. Chapter twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't believe this is the last chapter! Huge thanks to Stormkpr for betaing every last word and to every reader who's stuck with it this far! You might want to keep an eye out for my next multichapter, "The Best of Friends", which diverges from canon at 7.13 with an arranged marriage and a good dose of angst. Happy reading!

Bellamy tries very hard to be patient as he waits for the Arkadia vehicles to arrive, and Clarke and Madi to arrive with them.

He has to admit, patience has never come easily to him. And he's struggling with it even more, today, when he desperately wants to get started on his new life. He tries to keep busy, do useful tasks. He heaves around a few crates of essential equipment, helps Raven with some odd jobs, fetches and carries for Jackson. At least these things count as starting a new life, in their way. They are all part of the process of building community.

He's not worried, as such, when Clarke still hasn't arrived by mid afternoon. This is about the time she arrived when they met up here last week, but he understands that she will be later today. She has had to collect her passengers and pack the rover, presumably.

He becomes mildly concerned when Kane appears driving the truck, Abby in the passenger seat, and Clarke's rover is nowhere in sight.

"Where are they?" He asks, knowing that Abby will know exactly who he's talking about.

"We set off before them. I'm sure they'll be here soon." She says soothingly.

He nods. Obviously they'll be here soon. He's probably worrying about nothing.

"How are you doing?" He asks her, because he supposes that's a kind and appropriate thing to do, now she's more or less his mother-in-law.

"Much better, thank you." She swallows, eyes sliding away, as if deciding how much to share. "I guess it's too soon to say I'm over it. I'm sorry for putting you and Clarke through all this."

He frowns. It's interesting that she phrased it like that, he thinks. As far as he can tell, all he's suffered as a result of her addiction is a little concern about her and a lot of concern about Clarke.

But it will do both him and Abby good to get to know each other on a more personal level, he supposes, so he tries to sound encouraging when he replies.

"It's OK. I understand. You've been through a lot. And I know Clarke is really proud of how you've fought to get well again."

Abby smiles cautiously. "Thank you, Bellamy. I guess I should say welcome to the family?"

He laughs – a slightly giddy sound, while he's still half-worried about Clarke's late arrival, but a laugh nonetheless.

"Don't you think it's a bit late for that, Abby? I think Clarke decided we were moving in months ago."

…...

Clarke and Madi do not arrive _soon_ , in the end. Bellamy tries to keep himself distracted as the afternoon lengthens, taking care of Abby and helping her set up med bay, catching up with Kane on the months they've spent apart.

But at last the light begins to fail and he can pretend no longer.

"They should be here by now." He announces to Raven and Abby.

"They'll get here soon. Or if not they'll get here tomorrow – they have the rations to stop for the night if they need to." Abby says calmly.

Bellamy gapes at her slightly. He knows she's been through a life-changing experience and all, but he can't believe Abby is being so calm about this when her daughter is missing. He's only just started to think of Madi as his foster daughter, and he's worried sick about her on top of his anxiety about Clarke's absence.

"How are you just sitting here calmly?" He comes straight out and asks her. It's hardly a subtle or polite thing to ask, but if they're now family and all, he figures a little honesty is allowed.

Abby snorts without humour. "My daughter's _Clarke Griffin_ _,_ Bellamy. She walks into danger on a daily basis. I'd go crazy if I worried about her every time, and I'm trying to be a bit calmer since – since my problem. I know she's safer now in that rover, wherever she is, than she has been most of the time she's been on this planet."

He considers that for a moment. It does make sense. He supposes he hadn't thought about it that way – he's been more preoccupied with the excitement of waiting for Clarke, and that has spilled over all too easily into anxiety. But he's pleasantly surprised to find that he can take in and evaluate Abby's point of view without reprimanding himself for his contrasting emotional response. It's kind of lovely not hating himself so much, these days.

"You want to help Kane with the cooking?" Raven suggests, pointing in his direction. "That might give you something to do besides worrying."

Right. Yes. A good suggestion, from a good friend who has done her best to look out for him, while they've been together in the bunker.

Bellamy spends a little time cooking, a little more time seeking odd jobs. He can't even go ahead and move his precious few belongings into a house, because he doesn't know which home Madi will choose until she arrives. So it is that he spends a while worrying about the emotional wellbeing of his foster daughter and how she will feel on arriving home, because obviously he wasn't already worried enough.

At last, the rover appears, Clarke at the wheel, Madi napping in the passenger seat.

Bellamy waves, runs over to greet them. Clarke opens the door, half-falling from the driver's seat and into his arms. And then Madi has been awoken by the commotion, too, and is joining the family hug with enthusiasm.

Finally, this village feels like home.

…...

Clarke spends just a few seconds taking in her surroundings when she pulls back from hugging Bellamy and Madi, takes a moment to get her bearings. Clearly the others have been here some time – much of the luggage has been unpacked and Jackson waves cheerily from the steps of the old village hall which will serve as their med bay.

And the other thing she notices right away? Bellamy seems disproportionately relieved about their arrival, in a way that rather implies he was feeling quite worried, she thinks.

"I'm sorry we kept you waiting. I didn't mean to worry you." She whispers to him, in between a couple of pecks on the lips and cheeks in greeting.

He frowns. "How did you know I was worried?"

She smiles at him softly. "I know you pretty well, you know. It's OK. I know you worry about the people you love – I should have realised this would get to you."

He laughs a little, presses a kiss to her forehead. "I'm OK now. I knew you would be fine but it just – it got to me. It's been a long week and I'm used to the people I love dying. I still don't trust that this is real, I guess."

"I get that." She hugs him again for good measure, meets his eyes with a look that she hopes says everything she is thinking but does not want to put into words, here and now, in the middle of the village. She'll speak to him properly, when everyone else is fed and settled in. That's how it works between them, after all – they make time to sit down together and talk about what really matters.

He understands what she's not saying, more or less. She can tell from the way he smiles softly at her, presses one last kiss to her cheek, and then breaks away to greet the other families with children who are climbing tiredly out of the rover.

Things move quickly, after that. They all eat together – some stew Kane and Bellamy have prepared. Madi identifies the home that was hers and is to be _theirs_ , and seems positively cheerful about moving in.

Clarke wonders how long that will last. She suspects that the initial excitement and relief of being home is winning out, tonight, but that in the days and months and years to come there will be grief to process on the subject of living in Madi's birth parents' old house. But she also knows that, as a parent, she cannot dedicate her entire life to worrying about what _might_ go wrong. That way lies madness. She can only take care of her daughter, do her best to keep her safe and happy, and deal with whatever life throws at them.

For tonight, that means tucking Madi into her old bed in her old room, telling her a cheerful bedtime story, and believing her when she says she's happy to be home.

Clarke and Bellamy make their way straight to their bedroom, when Madi is asleep. It should probably feel more strange to think of it as _their_ bedroom, Clarke muses, when it so recently belonged to the people who gave birth to their little girl.

Sure enough, Bellamy's mind is running along the same lines.

"I feel like I should feel weird that we're about to sleep in this bed." He says, gesturing to it.

Clarke frowns, nods heavily. "I know what you mean. I wonder if we've seen so much death now that we're immune to it."

"You know you don't mean that." He challenges gently. "You're not _immune_ to it. I know you're still hurting about Wells and your dad and Lexa. But I guess you're right – maybe we've come to think of it as too normal."

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that we were always going to have ghosts." She doesn't mean actual white-faced spirits from old Earth media, so much as a more metaphorical interpretation. "Wherever we live, someone else has died. That's Earth."

"That was the Ark, too." He reminds her, and it's true.

"Maybe Earth doesn't have to be like that any more."

It's a hopeful note, for what ought to have been a hopeless conversation. But now the elephant in the room has been addressed, she does feel more comfortable about sleeping in this room. Or rather – she feels more comfortable with just how comfortable it is, rather than feeling guilty that she has no grief to spare.

They don't make a big event of their first night together in their new home. They don't try any bold new sexual fantasies, or attempt to screw on every available surface in the house. Clarke fully intends to have a go at such things, another day, but for now she wants something simple and sweet.

That's why she waits until they are both lying naked in bed, and then pulls Bellamy in for a gentle kiss.

He kisses her back eagerly but without any hurry, more tender than heated. He's running a hand over the curves of her butt – not to grab or grope, but in a comforting, gentle way. She responds in kind, stroking his hair back from his face then settling her hand on his cheek, rubbing lightly at the soft skin there with the tip of her thumb.

He pulls away for a moment, whispers against her lips.

"You want to get some sleep or did you have other plans?"

She giggles breathily. "Other plans. We don't have to do anything... wild. Just – I've missed you."

He doesn't answer that in words. He answers with a more demanding kiss, smirking against her lips even as he kisses her deeply.

Things escalate from there. Clarke finds herself grinding shamelessly against his thigh, but she figures that's no bad thing. Is there anything wrong with letting her life partner – her soulmate – know that she's very into him? It seems like he's very into her, too. His cock is jutting hard against her hip, and she figures it's time to give him a clue. She keeps kissing him hungrily while she reaches down to wrap her fingers carefully around his erection, tugging on it lightly.

He gasps into her mouth, then laughs at himself a little.

"Is that a hint?" He asks, teasing.

"Yeah."

He doesn't make her ask twice. He rolls fully on top of her, eases his cock inside of her and starts moving slowly.

She sighs a relieved sigh. She's missed him, OK? She's missed not just his cock but his arms and his kisses and his heart, too. There's something about the way they're holding each other tight while he moves gently inside her that's really quite beautiful.

Beautiful, but not necessarily _stimulating_. She'd like a little bit more urgency, thank you very much.

She bucks her hips up to meet him a couple of times, and once again gives him a wordless clue in the form of her hands gripping his butt cheeks. As ever, he understands everything she isn't saying – he starts moving a little faster, thrusts a little harder, coaxes them both closer to the edge.

"Love you." She gasps, the words slipping from her lips quite without her permission. She never had herself down as the kind of woman who would go for love confessions in bed, until these last few months growing closer and more honest with Bellamy.

He moans against her neck, whispers the words right back at her.

Huh. That's interesting. It sounds like he's getting close, there, and that maybe her words might have tipped him closer.

She tries again.

"I love you. Love how you make me feel safe."

He doesn't try to speak, this time. He just moans louder, breath coming in stuttering gasps that tickle her neck. And that tips her closer to the edge in turn – it's incredibly hot to watch and hear and feel as he comes undone over her like this.

He gets there first, by mere seconds, spilling inside of her with a loud groan. But she's not far behind, clenching around him while he's still riding through the last aftershocks of his own orgasm. She has a feeling that's no coincidence – she definitely gets off on knowing he's having a pleasurable time.

They lie there for a moment, Bellamy still on top of her, but she's not complaining about his weight. It's comforting, somehow, to know he's right here, and she loves the feel of his strong back under her fingertips.

"I love you too. Sorry I was too distracted to say it back." He says lightly.

She laughs. "It's OK. It was pretty hot seeing you that distracted, if I'm being honest."

The Bellamy she used to know would have been awkward about all this, she thinks. He'd have been awkward about finally getting together when they've been friends all this time. He'd have been apologetic about not saying much to her while she was talking to him just then, would have probably even been insecure about coming first, but then covered it with a cocky smirk.

This Bellamy's not like that. He's managed to ditch most of his self-loathing and the insecurity that used to give way to anger, and replaced it all instead with only even more love, it seems.

All in all, things between them are comfortable, as they lie here together. In fact, life itself is pretty comfortable, now she comes to think about it – certainly more comfortable than she would ever have imagined, when she first arrived on Earth.

…...

On his first morning in his new home, Bellamy gets one of his greatest wishes.

It's not just that he wakes up next to Clarke, presses a soft kiss to her cheek. It's not just that she gives a muffled humming sound and presses closer into his side when he does so.

It's the fact that she's half awake, and she stays that way. She blinks a bleary eye at him, then snuggles back down into her pillow.

He grins to himself. This is all he's ever wanted for Clarke – for her to learn how to rest and relax and take a moment for herself, for a change. To learn how to sleep in of a morning, as if the world is not ending.

He presses one last kiss to her cheek, then shuffles carefully away from her, set on getting out of bed. He plans to leave Clarke to get some rest while he checks on Madi and sees what can be done about breakfast or setting up the village.

Clarke objects, though. She clings to him as he pulls away, and when he finally eases free of her hands with another kiss to her knuckles, she blinks heavily and goes to sit up in bed.

"No. Stay where you are." He suggests – or perhaps it has more of the firmness of an order.

She shakes her head. "I should get up."

"You don't have to." He murmurs, perching on the edge of the bed and reaching out to stroke her hand. "You were driving late yesterday evening. Get some more rest – nothing urgent needs doing this morning. I can make sure Madi's OK and get her some breakfast."

She hesitates, frowning softly.

"Please, Clarke. Give yourself a morning off."

She nods – decisively, because she's Clarke, but not urgently or frantically, so that's progress. And then she settles back down onto her pillow, tugs the covers up around her shoulders. He smiles softly down at her, can't resist bending to press one more kiss to her forehead. But this is the last one before he goes to get on with things – really it is.

The last thing he sees before he leaves the bedroom? Clarke reaching for his pillow, hugging it close to her, inhaling a deep breath as if trying to catch the scent of him still on the soft cotton.

So, yes, he starts the morning in a good mood. And it gets only even better when he knocks on the door of Madi's room, hears her call out to enter, and goes inside to find that she has dressed herself in a rather mismatched outfit and is currently rifling through a small chest.

"Are you OK this morning?" He asks her gently. He's no idea how well she's really dealing with being back here.

"I think so." She answers in Trig, frowning hard.

Bellamy nods, as much to show her he's happy following a conversation in her childhood language as to encourage her to keep talking.

"I have some of my toys back." She gestures at the chest in front of her. "I'm happy about that but also sad. Before, when I was in Polis, it was easy to pretend that _nomon_ and _notu_ were just away. But now I'm here and my toys are here and they're not."

"I understand why that's sad." Bellamy says, clunky but heartfelt.

"Yeah?"

"My mum died when I was too young – older than you are now, but still not ready to say goodbye to her." He swallows, fishes for words. "I had to live in the same house. All her things were still in her room. It was hard."

Madi looks up at him, curiosity in her eyes, apparently deciding this conversation is of far more interest than her toy chest.

"I didn't know that. Clarke never said."

"Maybe she thought I should tell my own story." He suggests. He's grateful for it, really – it gives him an opportunity to bond with Madi and show her some empathy now.

"And Clarke lost her father." Madi points out.

"Yeah."

There's a beat of silence. Madi strokes her hand over a small doll, then looks back up to Bellamy again.

"Do you think we'll ever stop losing our parents?"

Bellamy swallows thickly. "I don't know. I can't tell the future – I wish I could. But I think our chances of staying safe and having our family stay safe are better now than they ever have been in my life."

Madi nods, somewhere between resigned and satisfied. That's good enough for now, Bellamy thinks. That's not a bad start, for their first morning as a new family in her old home.

"You want some breakfast?" He offers gently. "We can have fresh food instead of all that dried meat."

She perks up a little, smiles slightly. "Is there fruit?"

"There are apples."

That passes the test, apparently. That has Madi standing up, putting her precious doll away, and leading the way from the room.

She grows gradually more cheerful, over the course of breakfast, as the everyday routine distracts her from her grief and the novelty of fresh food and a new foster father seems to brighten her mood. She asks Bellamy a lot of questions about himself – some thoughtful, some impertinent, and some that his Trig is not yet quite up to answering. But they manage well enough, and sure enough it seems Clarke was right when she said that Madi would be only too glad to have Bellamy in her life.

Madi is on her third apple, and Bellamy is wondering whether it is healthy to let her eat any more, when she asks a most unexpected question.

"Do you like soccer?"

"Soccer?" Is the word the same in Trig as in English? Or is this some totally different concept?

"Yeah. Soccer. The ball game Clarke likes. She used to watch it with Wells."

"I've never played it. I didn't watch it much as a kid – my sister didn't like it."

"You have to learn how to play today. It's a family trip." Madi announces.

He nods, encouraging, even though he has very little idea what the child is talking about.

"You and me and Clarke are going to play soccer today." She insists. "Clarke said we could. Because we played it yesterday on the journey but you weren't there and we didn't want you to miss out."

He smiles, oddly touched. It seems his daughter has already decided what his schedule for the day will be – but somehow it doesn't bother him anywhere near as much as it used to bother him when his mother and sister used to make decisions on his behalf. That's because he knows this decision is born of love, not taking him for granted.

"Sure. We're playing soccer – we'll go when Clarke wakes up."

…...

Clarke feels odd, when she wakes up for real and prepares to face the day. Not odd in that she feels guilty about taking her time this morning – more like it feels odd _not_ to feel guilty about that, after all these months bearing the weight of the human race on her shoulders.

She's looking forward to seeing how things could be different, in this new village. She and Indra and Kane and Bellamy and Octavia and Layla and so many others will work together to run things, rather than bearing it all alone. And hopefully that will leave her time for a sleepy morning hugging Bellamy's pillow – or Bellamy himself – rather more often.

She's still Clarke Griffin, so when she does decide to get up, she does it quickly. She tugs her clothes on, strides down the hallway in search of her partner and child. She finds them in the kitchen, eating apples and laughing about something she has missed.

That's fine. Let them have their in-jokes. It warms her heart, to see her two favourite people in the world getting on so well.

She greets Madi with a hug, greets Bellamy with a brief but heartfelt kiss on the lips. She takes an apple for herself and chooses a seat at the table. She's not allowed to sit down and enjoy the morning for long, though.

"You have to eat quickly, Clarke. We're going to play soccer." Madi announces.

"Give Clarke a minute to catch up with us, Madi." Bellamy chastises her softly.

"Why are we playing soccer? I should go help my mum and Jackson with the med bay." Clarke hedges. She does want to have fun with her daughter, of course she does. But she cannot neglect her duty all day.

"Jackson's pretty much done." Bellamy says with a shrug. "He's a very competent guy. I think in some ways taking the lead in the Polis med bay without your mum around gave him a new burst of confidence."

Clarke nods. She's half-noticed that herself, honestly. She's not really surprised to hear that med bay is almost ready. But she still feels instinctively uncomfortable at the thought of going off on an outing rather than playing her part here.

"How about this? We go out and play soccer this morning while the weather's good. Then we can see what needs doing here later this afternoon. Raven says it'll rain. How about that?" He suggests.

She purses her lips, somewhere between a smile and a frown. He knows her too well, this wonderful man. Of course he's appealing to her sense of logic, pointing out that it's very rational to make the most of the good weather now, and perform indoor tasks when it rains.

Ugh. She can't decide whether she's more amused or exasperated that he's started using her own personality against her.

"OK. Looks like we're playing soccer." She concedes cheerfully.

They move quickly, after that. Apples are eaten swiftly, bootlaces are tied, and Madi returns from her bedroom hugging an object that will pass as a soccer ball. It's not the real thing – a little on the small side, and too soft – but it'll do the job. Clarke knows full well that this morning is more about having fun than high-quality gameplay, and that's just fine with her.

She's got a lot better at having fun, since she met Bellamy.

They tell Kane where they're going before they set out into the woods, and he waves them away without concern, ignoring their promises to help out around the village later with a tenacity that Clarke thinks is admirable. He's a good stepfather, she has to admit it.

She's happy, as she makes her way through the forest with Madi and Bellamy – purely happy in a way she cannot remember being for years. It's not that she's forgotten the people she has loved and lost. She knows she will never do that. It's more that she is healing, now, and able to find joy in the sunny moments with the people she loves who are still alive.

Madi swears she knows a clearing where they can play. So she's leading the way, cutting a path through the woods with a determined stride.

"We're nearly there!" She cries now, breaking into a run.

"Madi -"

"Race you!" The child calls, sprinting off down the path.

Clarke looks to Bellamy. He looks right back at her, brow raised, a challenge in his eyes.

So that's how it is that the two of them end up racing through the trees in pursuit of their daughter, running side by side. Clarke has a feeling that Bellamy could run faster, if he really chose to. She gets the impression that he's sticking by her side deliberately.

It's exhilarating, to run through the woods like this. To run not through fear or pursuit or urgency, but for the fun of feeling the wind in her hair and playing a childish game with her daughter. It's moments like this that she used to dream of, when she drew her dreams of Earth.

Madi stops running first, stumbling on her short legs, panting and laughing, all at once. Clarke draws to a sudden halt right behind her, keen not to bump into her.

Bellamy falls straight into Clarke, steadies himself with a hand on her waist which somehow lingers long after he's regained his balance.

Maybe that's what makes her laugh. Or maybe she's joining in with Madi's giggle, or maybe she's just laughing for the sheer joy of being alive in this valley of green. Either way, she's laughing. And then Bellamy's laughing, too, even as he squeezes her waist in a half-hug, and Madi is turning to beckon them onwards with a smile.

Clarke gets it, now. She gets it as she looks between Bellamy and Madi and the dappled sunlight beyond.

This is what family means, now the world has ended. This is what family means, as life on Earth begins again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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